Sine Qua Non: Sequel to Quid Pro Quo
by Pixel-0
Summary: Following Quid Pro Quo, Sam and Dean are separated for all eternity. One is amongst the living with their mother, while the other resides with the souls of the dead. And the god of the underworld is present to assure they will remain forever bound to this
1. The Brother

**Title:** Sine qua non

**Rating**: PG-13 for violence, language and disturbing moments

**Category**: AU Short Story

**X-Posted**: Delphi Forums Supernatural Board

**Author's Note: **To all the wonderful reviewers who wanted a sequel to "Quid Pro Quo," this is for you. I'm just sorry it took me so long to get this one up and around.

**Disclaimer**: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the Warner Bros television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.

* * *

_"Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides." __—Lao Tzu _

"_The courage of the tiger is one, and of the horse another." –Ralph Waldo Emerson_

* * *

_One_

A crack of lightning tore across the earth and thunder pounded the world with its unforgiving fist. The earthbound brother tumbled to the ground as the earth rolled beneath him like an enraged beast. He clutched the dry blades of grass between his fingers even as their paper-like texture cut into his flesh. Fierce wind slashed at his clothing and tore at his skin, while the world around him began to fade into darkness. He pressed his face against the ground, trying to stop the dirt that flew into his eyes and caked the inside of his mouth and nose. Far away, a man was screaming, and he realized as he lay in the powerful storm that raged across the foreign land after his brother had crossed the void between life and death, that he was that man.

If later asked, he would be unable to remember how long he had lain against the ground, fearing that he would be lifted away in the tempest. He would only remember how less than a day ago a man, dressed in black with perfectly articulated words, came to the two brothers. He was, he said, the god of the underworld. Having control of the souls of the dead, this man would be willing to give them their mother back under one condition: A brother would have to go in her place so that she could leave the underworld freely.

A soul for a soul.

It had not been an easy decision to make, but it had been made nonetheless. One of the brothers had gone, not out of hatred for his sibling, but out the purest of love with the knowledge that his death would give his brother their mother back.

And now one of them was gone forever.

What seemed like hours later, the wind died down and the sky slowly lightened as black storm clouds crept away. In the distance, a building that seemed to resemble the restaurant in which the two brothers had eaten breakfast so long ago began to emerge out of the fog. The brittle dry grass of the deity's prairie started to turn green and fleshy, as a black asphalt parking lot moved around the restaurant like unbridled water. Small piles of ashes on the ground slowly twirled upwards, carried by a gentle breeze, where they swirled and danced, creating recognizable humans. The black dust formed into glowing flesh and blowing hair, as the people blinked, confused as to why they were standing outside. They could not remember the scene in the restaurant where two young brothers had ran for their lives from a man in black. The people looked around for a moment, waking from an intoxicating dream, and then they returned to their business, blissfully unaffected by everything they had played witness to.

Across the slowly emerging street from the restaurant, the remaining brother still laid prone in the grass, breathing heavily as he struggled to control the tears and screams that had racked his body for so long. A trickle of water could be heard as an ornate park fountain rose out of the rich grass between the tall trees that were growing without limits. The brother, ignoring the growth around him, watched his fingers in front of him clench and unclench the strands of grass spasmodically, dirt crusting under his short nails and over the bloody cracks in his fingers. Part of him still foolishly believed that he would turn over onto his opposite side and find himself in a cheap motel room with his brother sleeping on the other bed across the room.

But when he rolled over onto what felt like a bruised rib he found himself facing a pair of white slippers. His heart caught in his throat, and he struggled to breathe as he craned his neck up. Standing above him, dressed in a flowing white nightgown with lustrous golden hair was his mother. A strangled sob escaped his parched lips as she knelt down next to him, and he pushed himself into a sitting position. She smiled at him, slightly confused, but seeming pleased to see him nonetheless.

"M-om?" his voice came out as a crack.

She nodded, eyeing his cuts and bruises where the wind had beaten against him after his brother left. Slowly, she lifted her pale feminine hand and touched the side of his face, prickled with the hairs of a man she had never seen on her son before. He inhaled sharply, struggling not to recoil under her human touch that he had not felt in decades. His heart dropped into the acidic pit of his stomach, and he felt the hot tears begin to rise to his eyes again.

"You're my son," she stated, as if reaffirming this more to herself than him.

"Yes," he replied. He fought to restrain himself from throwing his arms around her and burying his face into her soft curls. His brother was dead, gone forever, and in his place, this sibling had been given their mother back.

A life for a life.

"Where is your brother?" she asked, a slight frown across her delicate features.

The young man did not know what to say. He thought of all he could tell her. How they had been given the option to save her from death, and how one of them had gone. How they had both cried when they left the earth, and how they were now separated for all eternity. Despite everything, though, he did not want to see her hurt when he told her that one of her sons was now dead.

"He left," is all he said.

"Left?"

The brother nodded faintly. He did not want to explain this to her now. It was too much pain too fast. Too many unleashed emotions wrecking havoc on his body in this short timeframe. If his heart didn't burst, surely his head would.

"Where is your father? Where is John?" she asked.

"He's been out looking for you."

Again, that beautifully confused look that nearly broke her son's heart. "How long have I been…" She paused, and it was the first sign that showed she had some understanding of what had happened to her. "Gone?"

"Nearly twenty years."

She sighed heavily at that and looked away from him across the street. As a warm breeze began to stir across the land, lifting her hair, the familiar scent of her rose water caressed the son seated beside her. It was too much of that comforting fragrance, and he could not stop himself. In a flurry of unfamiliar emotions, he threw his arms around her, burying his face in the soft skin of her neck. She stiffened slightly as he pulled her tight against his damaged body. He began to cry, great racking sobs that shook his body then, crying not only for the brother he had lost, but the mother he had gained, and the life that would change so much like it had before. He cried for all the moments he had denied his pain for twenty years. As he wet her skin with his tears, she stroked his hair softly like she had when he was a child, and she whispered quieting words to him.

"Momma…" He was simply unable to stop himself from the powerful emotions surging through his body. Regardless of his physical age and the infinite number of horrors he had faced without a blink, he wanted more than nothing to be held by his mother at that moment.

She rocked his body gently, like she had done with he was so small and so tender years ago, as they knelt together. She kissed his tears and caressed his wounds, both those seen and those within his heart. "It'll be okay," she whispered. "I'm here now. It'll be okay, Dean."


	2. The Son

_Two_

Back at the motel Mary walked through the small room and gently touched the items that once belonged to Sam. The laptop Dean had thought was left behind in the restaurant was patiently waiting on Sam's bed when Dean walked through the motel's door. The computer fascinated Mary, and Dean had to remind himself that such things did not exist when she had died. Even though she seemed to understand the principle that she had once been dead and was now alive again, she still maintained a very distant, dream like quality. Perhaps it was twenty years in the underworld distorting her mind that used to be so acute and witty. Dean wondered if she would ever be the same again.

Using the Internet, he accessed a local news site on the screen, still covered with Sam's fingerprints, trying to explain it to her so that she could understand how much the world had changed in twenty years. She hesitated to touch the keyboard on the small machine, her hands remaining clutched in her lap as Dean stood above her, pointing to the virtual page. Unexpectedly, as Dean was trying to explain the concept of the Internet itself, she rose to her feet and walked away from the bed. Dean stopped talking while she walked over to Sam's duffel bag and pulled out a faded T-shirt that used to be his. As the shirt emerged from the duffel bag, a pile of photographs tumbled to the ground with it. Dean had seen the photos only a few times, but he knew immediately what was in the picture that would be important to his mother.

Gradually Mary, still holding the shirt, crouched to the ground and picked up the photographs. She had looped the shirt over her clutched fist, holding it against her nose, smelling Sam's masculine scent, much like she had when he was a newborn with that precious fragrance. Dean moved beside her as she sank down on the bed and began to look at them. The first picture was of Sam and Jessica, arms around each other, laughing and teasing in what appeared to be a college dormitory. A faint smile flickered across Mary's face, and for the first time, Dean noticed the resemblance between the two most important women in his brother's life. She was quiet as she looked through the assorted pictures of Sam in various stages of his life. There were moments at college parties, where Sam looped arms with male friends he had never mentioned to Dean. Captured minutes of Dean and Sam when they were younger, posing with their father after a hunt. There was even a small baby photo of Sam, taken when he was only hours old in the hospital.

At last she spoke, "Tell me about Sam."

"Sammy?" Dean echoed before he could stop himself from using the dreaded nickname.

"What was he like? Was he okay? Was he hurt?" Mary asked, instantly thinking back upon the fire and how she had ran for Sam to save him from a being who had ultimately taken her life.

"Hurt? No, no, he wasn't hurt. He was…" Dean paused, unsure how to describe Sam to his flesh and blood mother. It shouldn't have been so hard, but it was, and it hurt so badly. "Sam was brilliant. He was always the rational one out of Dad and me. He went to college. Stanford University out in California. I guess he was even going to law school, he was that smart."

Mary smiled, still not meeting Dean's eyes, but remaining focused on a photo of Sam by himself in what appeared to be a park-like setting. There were numerous trees in the background, and Sam himself was slouched against one, looking into the camera. It was an impromptu photo, and even though Dean knew how much Sam disliked to have his picture taken, Sam looked comfortable and at ease. He wore a baggy T-shirt with the Stanford emblem, and his eyes smiled beneath his shaggy brown hair.

Now there would never be another smile.

"What happened?" she asked.

"His girlfriend, Jess, the blonde chick in these pictures…she died."

"How?"

The simplistic word hurt Dean, realizing what he was not only going to have to say, but to admit. "Like you," he finally forced himself to answer. This did not appear to affect Mary in the least, even though Dean was back in Sam's apartment, pulling his brother off the bed as Sam yelled and clawed at Dean's back. Dean was back in the house with his father yelling at him to take Sam and run while his mother burned on the ceiling.

"He joined you and John after that then," Mary finished for him.

"No, not Dad. Dad's been missing for months now. We can't get in contact with him. We've just been searching across the country for him without any luck," Dean admitted. "I keep trying to call him, but there's nothing. Dad's somewhere, but we don't know where."

"Where exactly is Sam now?"

The ultimate question, Dean thought bitterly. "Sam…is…" He sighed, rising to his feet and walking to the window to turn his back on his mother. This is what he had been willing to die for, and now that she was back, now that she was living, he couldn't remove his mind from what Sam must have experienced to give this to him.

When had they ever really cared for each other that much to be willing to give the other their mother in trade for eternal death?

"Sam is gone," Dean finally said, crossing his arms to the window where the sun slowly began to set. Before Mary could ask any further questions, he continued and spilled out the words rapidly, unable to stop himself, "This man came to us and told us that he could allow you to come back to us…if one of us went in your place. And, we didn't…we didn't want to go, but to have you back…to have Dad back, too. It was, god," Dean gasped, struggling again not to cry. He was starting to believe that he had done more crying that entire day than he had for that year. Either he was crying or swearing, and swearing, somehow, just didn't seem all that appropriate in front of his mother. "And Sam went. I couldn't stop him. He just…went…And now, he's gone."

"He gave himself up for me?"

"Yeah, that was just the way Sam was. Unselfish like that. He wanted me to have you back because he couldn't remember you. He wanted you to be able to live again and for Dad to quit hunting and come home."

"He gave himself up for _you_."

Dean looked out the window, as he felt his mother's hand begin to rub his back as she had when he was so young. "You feel guilty for staying behind." It was a direct statement. No question needed.

She had always been able to see right through him

Dean nodded mutely.

"Maybe he'll come back."

"No, that was part of the deal," Dean explained. "Once we accepted, we could never come back. For you to stay here, it was how things had to be."

"I want you to do something for me, Dean," she said.

"Anything."

"Call your father."


	3. The Awakening

_Three_

When Sam first regained consciousness, he did not open his eyes.

He had a vague sense of floating, suspended without restraints or harnesses to hold him above the ground, but his earth-adapted mind argued that such things could not be possible. The laws of gravity simply would not allow it. His muscles were sore and ached from their very bellies, and his skin tingled with a low burning sensation that crept throughout his body. In the back of his skull, a deep throbbing headache was growing.

When he did look upon the world where he now resided, he knew that he would probably never want to open his eyes again. So it was that he tried to sort things out in his mind before he opened his eyes, hoping to give himself some mental stability before everything collapsed. There had been a man who had called himself a god, and this man had offered the Winchester sons their mother back. The catch was that one of the brothers had to die in return for this, and Sam had stepped forward before Dean could argue with him, before Dean could foolishly jump through the portal between life and death himself. Dean had screamed, Sam remembered now, and Dean wasn't a screamer. Dean preferred to swear and shoot, rather than bellow and rage. But, as Sam had teetered on the edge separating two worlds, Dean had screamed. Hell, Dean had cried. If the situation hadn't been so serious, Sam would have laughed.

Yet the situation had been serious, and Sam went forward to give Dean the mother back Dean had always wanted. It wasn't any secret that Dean thought of their mother on a daily basis and that the pain of her loss ate away at him. While Sam, too, desired to have his mother back, he knew that being motherless took a much harder toll on Dean than it did on himself.

The man who called himself the god of the underworld had nearly pushed Sam through a large split in the air. The glow that spilled like blood from the gash had blinded Sam so badly that he was forced to close his eyes, as the man placed his hand on Sam's back and guided him to the other side of life. Now, reflecting upon those past events in silence, Sam could only assume that the light had burned his skin also. As the illumination had grown brighter around them, piercing through Sam's closed lids, Dean's cries faded into the distance and loud wails began to build. They were unearthly screams of pain and pleas that built in such great volume Sam would have raised his hands to cover his ears. But, he had been unable to move any part of his body, and so the shrieks ripped through his body, sending reverberations throughout his pained flesh.

Sam had then lost consciousness, which had been a blessing, because no matter how terrified he had been of what would happen to him if he did faint, he could not bear the screams any longer. And now he was awake, even if he still refused to open his eyes, and the world around him was silent and cool. He remembered the man's words before he had crossed over about how the brother who went to the underworld would not be in any pain. _What a liar_, Sam though bitterly as he attempted to flex the muscles in his arms only to discover the searing agony that scurried through him. He remembered too, how the man had told Dean and him that the brother would not even recognize the fact that he was dead, as the brother's thoughts would cease, and he would exist in a dreamlike state. Now this was a more interesting concept that the man had lied about.

Sam could understand if the man would lie about the brother not being in pain when he had died, because the man certainly wouldn't have been truthful about that. To make the brothers go with him, he wouldn't have openly admitted to the searing pain Sam was now feeling. But the fact that Sam still maintained a rather decent grasp on reality, considering his circumstances, confused him. He remembered crossing through the vortex back on earth, and he even understood the idea that he very possibly could be dead. Sam's inner sense immediately realized that something in the trade between his mother and him had gone askew.

Perhaps the deity did not even realize how wrong things had gone yet.

Terrified of the notion that the man may return to further torture him if necessary, Sam decided that he should open his eyes. He braced himself, trying to think of every horrid evil creature that had ever laughed in his face and spat in his eye. He thought about blood dripping from ghosts' eyes and flesh burning off a possessed man. Forcing himself to remain strong, Sam slowly opened his eyes.

At first, the world was black, and Sam immediately feared that he was blind. Gradually, though, colors began to flood back into his vision and fuzzy shapes in the distance became outlined into distinct objects. The picture in front of Sam became clear, and as Sam took the vision in, he felt an overwhelming terror beginning to build inside him. He struggled to keep it down, to keep himself sane, but he could not.

It was then that Sam screamed.


	4. The Reunions

_Four_

Mary slept in Sam's bed later that night after Dean had placed what seemed like hundreds of phone calls to his father's voicemail. Dean knew his father wouldn't answer, but he continued trying, not for himself, but for his mother's hopeful look that bringing his father back would solve all their problems. Nevertheless, it was always the same tiring message without response from the other side, and Dean had memorized his father's virtual words until they played throughout his head even when the phone was off. Dean tried to sleep that night, wanting nothing more than to merely let darkness take him away from the events of the day, but it had been useless. How could he sleep in the same room with a mother who had been dead for the last twenty-two years? To complicate matters that very same mother was sleeping in his brother's bed who had died not less than twenty-four hours ago. It was too much, even for Dean, who was resilient to most things that bothered others. For the first time since Sam had come back from college, Dean was beginning to understand how his father had turned to alcohol to block out the pain of life.

Dean didn't doubt that his mother had some sort of affection for Sam. After all, it was Sam who Mary ran back inside for when the dark man appeared next to Sam's cradle. It was Sam who Mary had literally died trying to save. John, too, had a bond with Sam, even if the relationship had been weakened slightly after Sam had walked out on their odd little family to go to college and make something of himself. It was John who had grabbed Sam from the crib while the ceiling caved in with the roaring flames. It was John who had bragged to their customers on hunting trips that his younger son was going to be a lawyer. But, above all, it was Dean who had run from the burning house when he was only a child with Sam cradled in his arms. It was Dean who had spent months and miles with Sam, risking their lives side by side and divulging the past secrets to each other.

In the end, it was Dean who was the most broken over Sam's loss.

After fitful tossing in the motel's bed, Dean pushed himself off his mattress in the darkness and walked to his duffel bag. As he slid the jeans over his pajama bottoms, he glanced over at his mother who was sleeping in her white nightgown under the sheets Sam had occupied not so long ago. Sighing heavily, he finished buttoning his jeans and grabbed his car keys from the motel's cheap table. He paused for a moment before walking outside, considering leaving a note for his mother. But he didn't know what to tell her in the note because he didn't know exactly what he was preparing to do.

Outside, he sat on the steps leading up to the room, clutching his head in his hands and letting his thoughts somersault in his head. There had never been any uncertainty that he wanted his mother back. He had wanted her back all his life and would have given anything for her, but now that Sam, the only person who had ever really understood Dean's life and lived it alongside him, was gone forever, everything seemed to be so wrong and out of place. There had to be some way to make things right again, but Dean's anxiety ridden mind didn't know how without defying everything he had ever known about life and death.

Some time—maybe even hours—later, a truck with a rattling engine pulled into the empty lot and parked with its lights facing Dean. Squinting, he raised a hand to his eyes and attempted to see the person who stepped out of the truck as the headlights died with the slam of a creaking door. It was a large man who approached Dean in slow, even crunches across the gravel parking lot. Cautiously, the skin on the back of Dean's neck began to prickle and he moved his hand to his pocket where a small switchblade laid, as the man moved closer, still only a silhouette in the darkness.

Then, the man spoke, "Get your hand off that weapon, Dean, it's just me."

It was a voice that Dean would have known anywhere. He pushed himself to his bare feet, peering into the darkness and shoving his hands into his pockets. "Dad," he said. There wasn't any need to question the man's identity. Dean knew his father's voice immediately after so many years of hearing it in his ears, and even after his father had left, Dean heard the voice in his mind, leading him to safety.

As John Winchester moved into the faint glow of an overhead light, Dean realized he had forgotten truly how long it had been since he had seen his father. The older man looked tired, even exhausted, with black circles under his eyes and the skin sagging around his face. He seemed to have lost the vengeful spark that kept him going for those long years after Mary's death. Dean thought his father looked worse than ever. There was a heavy scent of cigarette smoke in the air from the bars John frequently visited, and as John spoke, Dean tried to believe that it wasn't the smell of alcohol on his father's breath.

"I got your message," John said after clearing his throat.

"Messages, you mean."

"Yeah, all twenty-some of them." There was a pause. It would be one of the closest things Dean and John would get to humor. Theirs was a relationship built on respect and strength. Humor came only late at night after alcohol had loosened their tongues and minds. "Look, Dean, I came only because you sounded serious. If you're shitting me about your mother—"

"Dad, what kind of moron do you take me for?"

"Well, you've pulled some rather idiotic stints before, and I would hope that you had grown out of that teenaged phase by now."

"I wouldn't lie to you about something like this," Dean argued, feeling hurt that his father would doubt his words after the years they had spent hunting alone together after Sam left.

"So, tell me what happened, then."

Sitting back down on the steps with John beside him, Dean told his father what had happened, every detail that might have seemed too simplistic for a normal person, Dean recalled in the most vivid detail possible. He talked endlessly, and when he finished, John didn't say anything for a long time. Dean couldn't read if his father was angry or upset with him.

"And you just let Sam go?" John finally asked.

"I didn't want him to. He just…he just went on his own. I couldn't stop him."

"You were both being very foolish in how you dealt with this ghost."

"Dad, it's not a ghost, trust me. I know a ghost when I see one, give me that much. It's worse than a ghost."

John exhaled strongly, and his breath formed a wisp of condensation that quickly scattered in the cool night air. "So, Sam can never come back?"

"No."

"Now, Dean…are you sure this is your mother and not just a shape shifter or another being to play with your mind? This ghost…god…might have sensed how weak you were and gave you a substitution to later kill you."

"It's Mom. I know it is."

"And where is she now?"

"She's in the room, sleeping."

"And how is she?"

Dean smiled faintly, a mixture of sadness and love overtaking his facial actions. "Just like she never left, Dad. She's…_Mom_."

John nodded, accepting his son's words, then he moved towards the door as he pulled a gun from his belt. Even though Dean had proclaimed that the being wearing his wife's face, was indeed the Mary who had left him, John would take no chances. "This your room?" he asked, even though Dean was sure he was already knew and was just doing so to manage some bit of courtesy.

"Yeah, she's in there."

As John walked into the room, Dean rose to his feet and followed him into the room. He watched as his father slowly approached Mary and crouched down beside the bed. The gun was still held tightly in his hand, prepared to kill at any moment as John looked at Mary and carefully examined her sleeping form to assure himself that this beautiful creature really was his wife alive again. Hesitantly, he reached out and clasped her shoulder.

"Mary?" he whispered.

She stirred slightly, and her eyes opened slowly. They darted around the room in confusion before landing on the man in front of her. "John?" She paused, pushing herself to a sitting position. "John!"

Her arms flew around her husband while the gun clattered to the floor, and Dean watched as for the first time in over twenty years, life flew back into his father. His parents embraced, and as John clutched Mary to his battered body, Dean knew that it was the first time John had kissed a woman since Mary had died. His golden wedding ring glinted in the pale light that trickled through the room, and Dean noticed for the first time his mother's own diamond sparkling.

Dean bit down on his lower lip before turning his back on his parents' joyful reunion and walking out the door into the night.

He had work to do.


	5. The Decision

_Five_

Dean sat on the trunk of the Impala, bare toes curled over the bumper and knuckles pressed to his lips. Hot breath hissed between his curled fingers, forming thin wisps of condensation in the cool night air. After Dean had skimmed through his father's precious notebook too many times to reasonably count and remember, the journal now sat on the trunk next to him. Abandoning his reading, he now played idly with a black pistol, flipping the deadly instrument around his fingers as he stared off into the night.

"Dean." It was his father's voice behind him, thick and filled with the life that had been taken from him when his wife burned on his infant's son ceiling. Even though only John spoke, Dean could still smell his mother's fragrance lingering in the silent air around her and knew that she was there. Hesitating like a reluctant teenager, Dean slowly looked over his shoulder to view his parents standing behind him alongside the car.

John had his arm wrapped protectively around Mary's waist, never willing to let her leave him again. He seemed to have grown younger in a matter of minutes, finally allowing the taxation of years of stress slip off him with that one kiss to the only woman who ever mattered in his life. On the other hand, Mary was aged slightly with small lines around her eyes and mouth, so that she was closer to John's age instead of Dean's young years. Although John did not appear to notice the aging in his wife, Dean immediately did, and he wondered if this was all just part of the plan to fully meld his mother back into the real world, while abolishing all traces of Sam.

"Dean, what are you doing out here by yourself?" Mary asked, moving next to the trunk so she could stand beside Dean. Her hand lingered for a moment next to Dean's leg on the metal, and when she removed her fingers, a fogged outline remained on the Impala's paint. Having wrapped herself in John's bulky coat to prevent the night chill in her nightgown, she looked oddly out of place.

Dean ignored his mother's question and picked up the leather bound notebook next to him, holding it out as an offering. "You might want this back," he said to his father, who looked down at it in a mix of confusion and surprise, as if he had forgotten it existed entirely.

"No, no," John said, pushing the journal back at Dean. "Those days are over. Your mother is back," he replied with a smile down at the radiant Mary. "There is no reason to keep hunting."

"What about those who are in trouble?" Dean asked. "Will you still help them?"

"Well, yes, but I'm not going to go looking for trouble anymore. If they need me, I'll be there, but Dean…we don't have run anymore."

Looking down at the notebook in his lap, Dean ran his sore fingers on the smooth, aged leather edges. Every secret his father had ever had was in the tattered pages, and everything his father had ever stood for was tied behind leather bonds. Now the journal, the very symbolic representation of John Winchester, had been reduced to paper and ink.

"Come inside," Mary said to Dean. "It's getting cold out here and you don't have anything on your feet."

"Mom, I'm fine."

"Then why in the world are you sitting out here by yourself in the dark? Like it or not, Dean, I'm still your mother."

Dean smiled faintly at those words, reminiscent of the moment when he had wet his pants as a child and tried to hide it from his mother. Of course, Mary knew anyway, and had told him very firmly that she was there to take care of him because "like it or not, Dean, I'm your mother."

Finally, John spoke: "It's about Sam."

Dean merely nodded in response.

"Dean, what your brother did was very noble, and no one is ever going to say otherwise, but you and I both know that there's no way to get him back."

"Are you sure?" Dean asked, finally lifting his head for the first time to meet his parents' eyes.

"As sure as I'm ever going to be," John responded. "There have been rumors of people crossing between life and death, but Dean…"

"But what? Dad," Dean said, hopping down off the trunk, "our whole life has been about the rumors nobody thinks is true."

"You could spend years working on this and get nowhere. You may never stop searching and looking, and Dean…it could destroy you."

"Like the hunt for Mom destroyed you."

"Sam went because he wanted to," John replied, showing no indication that he had heard Dean's comment. "Your mother didn't have an option. Nobody forced him, all right? If that was the choice he made, then we have to accept it."

"Just like we 'had' to accept it when he went off to college?" Dean snapped. He hadn't meant for his voice to sound so irritated, but the sarcasm rolled thick nonetheless.

"Hold your tongue, boy," John warned.

Mary, sensing the confrontation, laid a hand on John's forearm. The last time she had seen John and Dean argue Dean was only four years old. Now he was a man just as much as John was, grown and raging. "Dean, I think what your father is trying to say is that we can't change what happened. We have to accept things as they are. Fighting the matter is not going to help anyone. That's not to say we don't want Sam back, but if your father says that nothing can get him back, then you have to trust him on this. We don't want to lose you, too. Dean, you're the only son we have now. Don't leave us."

There was a long pause, before John finally spoke. "Let's get back inside, and get a good sleep. Things will be clearer in the morning." Then, as an afterthought for Dean's sake, "Then maybe we can do some research on if we can get Sam back. Maybe there is a way I'm just not thinking of right now." With those words, he and Mary began to walk towards the motel room under the pale light of the parking lamp.

They were about halfway across the parking lot, when they heard Dean from behind: "No."

John and Mary turned around to see their eldest son sliding off the trunk of the car. As he stood with his arms crossed indignantly, he held his head high and met his parents' eyes evenly without a flicker. "I'm not going back to bed to just sleep this all away."

"What are you talking about?" John questioned. "Get inside, Dean. You're acting crazy."

"I listened to you for twenty years, Dad, and I'm not going to now. No, not now."

"Dean?" Mary moved forward, maternal protection flooding her emotions. Her blonde curls moved slowly in the building breeze.

"I know Sam _chose_ to go on his own, and I know that nothing we've ever heard about has made it possible for any person to travel freely between life and death. But, dammit, he pretty much took a bullet that could have been mine, and I'm not going to let him get away with that. I don't _care _if this takes me the rest of my life. I'm not going to stand here and pretend that what we have is perfectly normal, because it's not. I'm not going to say that we'll just 'make do' with the three of us as a family. Sam belongs here just as much as I do, and I'm not going to leave him behind."

John made a silent protest, perhaps a curse under his breath about the stubbornness of his son, while Mary waited for Dean to speak, knowing what he was about to say, but hoping that she was wrong.

Dean pursed his lips then and tucked the notebook under his arm. "I'm leaving tonight," he said with a click of the gun as he turned off the safety trigger. He smiled slowly in the pale light, a sort of hopeful, determined smile. "And I'm getting him back."


	6. The Rising

_Six_

It was every horror rolled into one writhing mass that reached for Sam's feet as he dangled thousands of feet in the air. It was burning flesh and bleeding wounds. It was wailing women and moaning men. It was death and decay so strong, so powerful, and so realistic that Sam screamed.

He was thousands of feet in the air, suspended like he had suspected, but with nothing to hold him there. As a low groan escaped his lips, the bonds holding him snapped, and he began to plummet to the horrors beneath him. He fell towards the mess, with his limbs twisting and turning over one another, as if he was just a pathetic rag doll caught in a storm. The wind hissed past his ears and ran through his hair, while he fell blindly and stupidly, cursing and bellowing.

Sam hit the blackened ground with a low thud instead of the smashing of his body into a hundred bloody pieces like he had been expecting. Around him, the visions he had played higher witness to slowly began to dissipate into darkness as he cleared his head. The smell of rotting flesh and the piercing shrieks of spirits slowly moved away until Sam was sitting on a rocky terrain, shaking his head. His headache was beginning to fade, which was fortunate, but his muscles still ached and his skin felt as though it had been lightly burned. Such sensations confused Sam, as he assumed that being dead meant simply that: Lack of sensations. He decided it would be too much to argue over what was supposed to be and what was, considering he had just fallen thousands of feet and was not splattered all over the rocky ground.

He remained seated for a moment, trying to come to terms with his surroundings, which appeared to be nothing more than a desolate landscape of jagged black rocks under an inky sky void of any stars or moon. Sighing heavily, he wiped a rough hand across his face, unsure of what to do next until he heard the sound of water. Having lived in California, Sam was familiar with the sounds of waves hitting the beach, and that was what he heard sitting somewhere in the vast underworld, wondering why he had been mutilated beyond belief and why the laws of gravity weren't applying.

Although Sam doubted that the water he was hearing was real liquid, he rose to his feet nonetheless and began to move in the direction. His first steps were painful, wrenching moments that sent flashes of agony down his spine, but as his muscles became readjusted to movement, the pain began to ebb slightly. Following the sound of the slurping waves, he walked through a dark tunnel that formed itself into crudely carved stairs that wound downwards.

At the end of the steps, there was a body of charcoal water, which was surrounded on all sides but one by high rising rock walls. The walls crawled above the water to form a ceiling over the entire area. Only one distant side of the water was not encased by the rough walls. Down by the shore, a man dressed in ragged dark robes pulled crying people from the water. A few of the people managed to climb out of the water on their own, but many were helped by the man. Afraid, Sam didn't venture too closely to the people and instead peered out from the corridor where the stairs were, trying to discern what it was he was witnessing.

As each of the people crawled out of the water, dry and dazed, the man grasped their hand and the bodies disappeared. There was no blinding flash of light or slow fade. Just a moment where they were standing and then ceased to be. A few of the people did not reach the man and instead began to make their way towards the stairs where Sam crouched. He tried to hurry back up the stairs, but curiosity kept him perched on the steps when the people approached him.

"Excuse me," an old lady said, looking down at Sam. "Have you seen my family?" She was wearing a medical nightgown and a plastic bracelet with the letters "DNR," which stood for "do not resuscitate." Medically, it meant that once she had passed, there would be no lifesaving attempts to bring her back.

"Your family?" Sam echoed.

"Yes…I was just…in the hospital…and now I'm here." She looked confused and as she glanced back at the water she had just crawled out of, smooth patches of skin between her gray curls caught Sam's eye. "Where am I?"

Sam couldn't answer her, as he was not sure of their location himself. Part of him wanted to take her with him, but it was obvious that she did not realize she was dead as he did. Instead, he directed her towards the creature that played gatekeeper on the water's edge. As the woman approached the robed man, he accepted her with a courteous nod, grasping her frail hand in his own. Like the others before her, she disappeared instantaneously.

Sam was unsure how long he waited there, crouched on his haunches in the darkness, listening to the slurping water against the black sand. More people came to him, disorientated some and others scared. They spoke of seeing cars coming towards them, planes falling from the skies, and blood gushing from open wounds. Although Sam had known that they were dead from the first person who talked to him, it was only after many conversations he realized that this lake was where these people passed from the living world to the underworld.

A glimmer of futile hope passed through his heart. If the living could pass through to the underworld here, perhaps he would be able to leave this world through the water as well. _It's worth a shot_, Sam thought. He glanced at the ragged man who methodically pulled people from the water and sent their souls flying elsewhere, and Sam decided that he might as well try for it. After all, he was no longer living, what else could the man do to him?

He ran for the water, long bounding strides on his dead legs, as the souls clambered up, crying and weeping. They did not appear to notice the tall man with chocolate hair who rushed towards them as they crawled in the opposite direction. Just as Sam had reached the water's edge, breath hitching in his throat, a voice echoed throughout his head, "One way only."

He looked behind him to see the man staring at him. Suddenly the man had two heads, one that was focused on the emerging souls and one that was looking at him. Sam's mind twisted, and he instantly felt dizzy. The hood of the man's robe covered his face, but Sam could make out the thin, dried lips of the gatekeeper. As Sam stared, the lips spoke again through Sam's brain, "One way only."

Sam knew what the man was trying to tell him, the waters would only carry people into the underworld, not out. Nevertheless, he was determined to try. He moved forward, standing on the edge of the black sand and looking out over the never ending sea. Just as Sam had moved one foot into the water, the liquid rose up his leg with a viscous texture like a greedy fist, clutching at his pant leg and pulling him down.

As Sam slipped on his feet, struggling to stand, he saw the faces of those who had died laughing at him from the water below him. "So you want to swim?" they hissed, as the thick fluid stretched over Sam's clothes, running like witch's fingers over his shoulders and chest. As it crept under his clothes, he shuddered at the gooey cold arms that touched his hot skin. "You want to swim with us, little boy?" Skeleton heads with splitting jawbones cackled, and decaying corpses rose out of the water to run their flaying fingers through Sam's hair. He was on his back now, trying to grab onto the sand to pull himself out of the water, which was becoming heavier as it dragged him down. As it pressed on his chest, he found that breathing was becoming a struggle. "Oh, so pretty," the spirits whispered in words that filled Sam's head to the brink, pounding against the walls of his skull. "So pretty. Mustn't let this one go to waste. He'll swim so well."

Sam was about to scream when the water rushed into his mouth, filling his lungs with its heavy weight. It was gelatinous and tasted bitter, and Sam could have sworn that the material had a mind of its own as it crawled down his throat. Inside his head, the ghosts chuckled and wailed. "Swim with us forever. We'll let you stay with us. Keep us company, warm blood. Hold us." Sam was quickly becoming nauseated; he was completely submerged in the water. In front of him, glowing ghosts surrounded him, nipping at his flesh and pulling at his hair. Oh, they were everywhere! A woman's rotted carcass had just moved in front of him, slipping her hands up his shirt as she leaned forward to kiss him when he felt a strong hand at the back of his neck, yanking him upwards.

He burst out of the water with a powerful gasp and was hurled onto the sand, feet away from the water's edge. The gatekeeper in his ancient robes looked down at the young man below him, pulling Sam to his feet, even though Sam was completely dry and not needing any air in his lifeless lungs. Even though Sam couldn't see the gatekeeper's face, he knew that he was being glared at from beneath the cobwebbed robes. "One way only," the other man repeated to Sam.

Sam nodded mutely, quickly remembering the feel of limp flesh slapping against his cheek under the water, and he began to climb the stairs away from the water. His legs trembled, and he frequently had to steady himself against the stone wall before continuing upwards. At the top of the stairs, instead of emerging into the same dark environment he had entered from, he found himself in a brighter place. Copper red rock formed high ledges under what appeared to be a glistening sun. Instantly, Sam was reminded of the miles spent driving through the American Southwest with his father on long hunting trips in the rocky deserts.

However, what was different from the earthly deserts was that in the middle of one of the large ridges was a glistening hole. Sam quickly recalled the same void back on Earth he had been pushed through to reach the underworld. As vortexes seemed to be the ideal method of travel in the underworld, he was curious if this portal would take him to a different part of the dead's world or perhaps even back to the world of the living.

Sam hurried towards the crack in the middle of the cliff, raising his hands to shield his eyes from the glow that spilled from it. The light was so bright it hurt Sam's already tender skin, but he pushed forward nonetheless. Passing through the hole, he emerged at the other side, blinking uncontrollably as his eyes adjusted to the bright new environment. In contrast to the murky setting of the black lake where the dead souls had clawed at him, this was a cleaner, radiant area.

It had the feel of a small room with glistening white marble walls and a door opposite the portal through which Sam had entered. As Sam stepped closer, he could see images swirling behind the door-like shape. Colorful, bright laughing images. It was the first sign of warmth Sam had felt since his death, and he found himself smiling unconsciously.

Focusing on the swirling colors, he saw that they were people who slowly became familiar faces. People that he had known from college lay on their dorm beds, studying for the next day's test, and then his parents appeared, sitting on a bed, talking to one another. Their lips moved, but Sam could not hear their words. As he watched them, he suddenly noticed his laptop sitting on the bed next to them. They were in _his_ motel room! It _had_ worked! His mother had come back, after all. Sam's death had not been in vain.

But where was Dean?

As soon as the thought had passed through him, the images shifted, scuttling across the sleek marble like a frightened fish until Dean was standing in a park. The sky was beginning to lighten in the distance as the sun slowly rose, sending faint shades of pink and orange across the world. There was a paranormal scanning device in Dean's hand, and his brow was scrunched in frustration. Without thinking, Sam jerked forward through the door with a cry. "Dean!"

There was a crackle in Dean's headphones, and he lifted his head at hearing his brother's voice.

He looked to the rising sun.

"Sam?"


	7. The Discovery

_Seven_

When Dean left the motel room, gathering everything he owned back into the old duffel bag, he hadn't meant to upset his parents so much; he knew that defying them was not something to be taken lightly however. It was the first time in nearly two decades that Dean was turning away from his father who had controlled every moment of his life since Mary died. Dean laughed quietly as he popped the latch on the Impala's trunk, thinking of the irony in the situation that Sam, perfect little college boy, was teaching Dean to go against their father. It was something Sam would get a good punch for if they ever met again.

Dean assumed, anyway, that his father would forgive him eventually. After all, John had softened to Sam as the years passed and even began to reluctantly accept the idea that his youngest son was going to college. Perhaps, too, with time, John would accept that his oldest son was preparing to cross the line between life and death to save that same younger son. It was something that Dean would hope for, but never fully expect.

As Dean loaded guns with silver bullets and others with rock salt, Mary tried to reason with him yet again by his car. She had barely been alive for a day, and she was already back into the maternal role she had abandoned too young when Dean's last major crisis in life had been not wanting to eat his peas.

"Dean, it's the middle of the night, where are you going?"

"To where it started," Dean sighed, shutting the trunk with a slam. "Maybe there'll be some answers there or something left behind from the ghost."

She sighed, looking back to the motel room where John stood in the screened doorway. His dark figure crossed its arms, and although Dean couldn't see his father's scowl, he knew it existed like it had when Sam left for California. Ignoring John's displeasure, Mary moved forward and grasped Dean's hands in her own. "Just be careful, okay?"

"Always am. Dad taught us first aid quickly," he joked. Unlike John, Mary understood her son's offbeat humor and responded to it better than her husband.

Reaching up, she touched the side of his face, and a playful look quickly came into her eyes. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"You might want to shave, too. Can't go into the underworld looking like a caveman."

As they both quietly chuckled, Dean realized just how much he had missed that beautiful sound coming from his mother. He would forever believe that she sounded like an angel when she laughed. Before the warm moment faded, Mary embraced her son and pulled him to her tightly. Dean was silent and rested his head on his mother's shoulder and reflected on what he was preparing to do. As Mary stepped back, she kissed Dean on the cheek and smiled with tears glazing her eyes. "Do what you have to," she said with a smile, "but just promise me you'll come back."

Dean smiled, wanting to be optimistic for his mother, even if he didn't know he could uphold such a vow. "I promise."

She didn't say anything, but gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, which was covered by his leather jacket, and she allowed him to step inside the creaking Impala. Heavyhearted, Dean watched her figure grow smaller in his rearview mirror as he drove out of the motel's parking lot and headed into town. His good-bye had been short and sweet, which was how he usually preferred them to be, but he couldn't help to feel that he was lacking something. Maybe he _was_ being foolish in going on this adventure, and he quickly pushed those thoughts from his mind.

Nevertheless, a little voice in him wondered if he would ever see his parents again.

As it was well past midnight, the majority of the stores in the town were dark with their doors tightly locked. Dean considered their closings to be a blessing, as there would be fewer people around to serve as witnesses to his latest crimes. Breaking into the locked doors was far less a problem than questioning townspeople. The last thing he needed was a nosy neighbor wondering why there was a man who, picking locks, was loaded down with more weapons than city's entire police force.

Dean parked the Impala in the abandoned parking lot of a restaurant and crawled in the backseat. Clutching a large hunting knife to his chest, he dozed lightly as he had not slept in over twenty-four hours. He knew that he needed to be fully alert for what he was undertaking. When the alarm on his cell phone woke him only a few hours later, he felt only slightly refreshed, but still fatigued. Fortunately, he had enough sleep that he could reasonably function, which was more than what he had before the brief nap.

After making sure he was properly protected with everything he could reasonably carry on his person, Dean slammed the trunk lid of the Impala shut and pulled out his homemade EMF device. Placing the headphones in his ears, he walked towards the restaurant Sam and he had eaten breakfast in when the god first came to them.

Dean moved slowly around the perimeter, sweeping the device back and forth, but catching nothing out of the ordinary. Only typical crackling came through the headphones, leaving Dean with a feeling of defeat. Considering that the entire restaurant had been destroyed and rebuilt in less than a day by the hand of some crazed deity, Dean assumed the place would have been crawling with paranormal activity.

Following his time around the restaurant, he went to the park across the street. The park also was empty, as the late night couples had gone home with the first signs of the rising sun. Dean yawned heavily, wishing that he had gotten more than two hours of sleep in the backseat of his car that night. But, time was of the essence, and he told his exhausted body that he would sleep more at the first chance he got.

After walking to the area where he first awoken after the deity had destroyed the land with the powerful storm, Dean bent to the ground and waved the device over the dew-covered grass. There was a slow crackle, only a slight increase from the restaurant, but nothing to get excited about. If anything, it was only a small patch of forgotten radioactive material from an old plant. Nothing that would lead him any further to Sam.

Scrunching his brow in frustration, Dean waved the device towards an area where he remembered the large vortex being placed.

"Dean!" There was a crackle in Dean's headphones, and he lifted his head at hearing his brother's voice.

He looked to the rising sun.

"Sam?"

Dean pulled the headphones from his ears and stuffed the device into his pocket. While he thought he had heard his brother's voice, sound alone was not completely reassuring. It was very possible for the deity to be mimicking Sam's voice in order to further confuse Dean. He pulled a shotgun loaded with rock salt from underneath the crook of his arm and held it out in front of him with his finger tight on the cold trigger.

"Sammy?" he repeated, turning in circles and trying to pinpoint where he had heard the voice.

There came an exasperated sigh from one of the trees, and Dean saw the faint outline of a hand, followed by an arm pushing through the air and finally the rest of Sam's body. Sam was faint, lacking all color in the style of an old movie when color television was first invented. Dean's eyes widened, and he swore under his breath, nearly dropping the gun upon seeing his brother in such a ghostly format.

"Sam!" His voice was a hiss mixed with question and shock.

"I'm back!" Sam grinned triumphantly. He walked towards Dean and tried to hit him on the shoulder when his hand passed through Dean's body.

"Or not," Dean replied with a grimace as put the end of the gun towards the ground so he could rest his hands on the weapon's butt.

Sam sighed again in anger. "It's _Sam_, anyway, jerk."

"What? Oh, yeah, Sam." There was a pause in the conversation then as the awkwardness of their situation began to emerge. Sam looked away from Dean towards the sun, which glowed with warm reds and oranges. The small flecks of dew on the grass caught the early morning rays, and they glittered like diamonds on the green blades. While Sam was admiring the realistic scenery, Dean eyed Sam's translucent skin and clothes. "So, you're really dead?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged aimlessly, attempting to be nonchalant about the situation, before he focused back at Dean. "I guess so, or as dead as I can be, given the circumstances."

"What exactly does that mean? 'Given the circumstances?'"

"Something went wrong in the trade, I think. You remember how the god said whoever crossed over wouldn't be in pain?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I've been in pain since I got here."

Dean snorted. "So, he lied. I'm not surprised. It's not like he was going to advertise the fact that after we died, we'd be in pain. Wouldn't exactly cause us to jump at the chance, huh?"

"There's more though. He also said that we wouldn't recognize the fact that we're dead. Dean, I _know_ I could be dead. Everybody else here? They don't understand that they could be dead. They're so…confused. But, I know what's going on."

Dean slid down against a tree and stretched his legs out in front of him, hooking one ankle over the other. With the gun resting safely in his lap, Dean scratched at his prickled chin while Sam moved down next to him. For the first time, Dean noticed that he was able to see the grass beneath Sam's transparent legs. "What are you saying?" Dean asked.

"I think something went wrong in the trade."

"Right, we've established that." Dean chewed on the inside of his lip before speaking, "Does the god know about it?"

"If he does, he hasn't come packing yet, let's put it that way."

"Where are you exactly?"

"It's hard to explain. The underworld really isn't a place…it's more of a series of places all meshed together. Right now, there's this room and there was a door that I just stepped through…and I thought that I could get back to the world—"

"Well, you are back."

"Just not alive…which is kind of what I was hoping for when I crossed over. You know, all that good stuff of breathing oxygen and everything."

"Yeah…" Dean was feeling more alert than he had since Sam first left, and his brain was eagerly turning with all the possibilities that now awaited with Sam speaking to him. "So, there's no way that you can get back, then?"

"Not that I've figured out, but god, Dean, I've only been dead for less than a day. This isn't something I'm really an expert at yet. If you gave me more time—"

"But you're not completely dead, you think."

"Not really. It's hard to explain. It's like I'm more alive than any of the other souls here, but more dead than you."

Dean furrowed his brow and mumbled something under his breath that Sam was unable to understand.

"What was that?" Sam asked, leaning closer to Dean.

"You went with your body," Dean replied thoughtfully. He looked up, meeting Sam's eyes and seeing that Sam didn't quite understand what he was saying, Dean sighed. "Most people when they die, leave their bodies here—right? And they go with just their souls over to the underworld. Well, when you 'died,' you went over with your body too. You're more than a spirit, Sam. You've still got your body because it didn't get left behind here to get buried or cremated or eaten by somebody else."

"_Eaten_?"

"Jeffrey Dahmer, Sammy."

"You're sick."

"Hey, look at it this way, at least I'm not sitting down right now with one of your legs going, 'Pass the BBQ sauce, please.' 'Sam.' It's what for dinner!" Dean grinned evilly.

Sam shook his head. "You disgust me."

"Yeah, it comes with the territory if you haven't noticed."

"But I think you may have a point."

"About you tasting good?"

"No about the body thing, moron. There was this big lake, and well, to make a long story short, some of the spirits there called me 'warm blood.'"

"But you don't really have blood," Dean responded.

"Maybe not like you have blood. I don't know, dammit. I can't exactly take myself to a laboratory and examine me like a first year biology project."

"Cool it there. All we know so far is that you're not really as dead as everybody else there."

Sam scowled, slightly upset at Dean's tendency to act as the expert in the conversation. Then again, he wasn't completely surprised. Whether his listener was dead or alive, Dean had to be the center of attention. "I guess not."

"But, what's it like being at least 'semi-dead,' y'know? I've gotta ask."

"It's…it's, I don't know. It doesn't feel that much different from being alive. There's certain rules that I don't have to follow."

"Like?" Dean pressed.

"Like being able to fall thousands of feet and not being blasted all over the ground."

"Sounds fun."

"It's not," Sam replied grumpily.

"You're just bitter because I'm alive, and you're not."

"Dean."

"Right, drop it. But, if you can't come over here, then I'm going to have to come over there. Have you found anything like that, yet?"

"Short of killing yourself? No. But I do have a suspicion. This lake I was talking about? It serves as some sort of passage between the living and the dead. Those who have just died have to travel this water to get to the underworld, right?"

"I'm listening," Dean said, raising an eyebrow slowly.

"Okay, as far as I can tell, this town and the area near it seems to be some sort of area to travel through to the underworld. I step through the door, I find you in this park. The deity appeared in that restaurant over there and took me away in this park. It could be possible that there's a body of water around that leads to the underworld."

"What are you saying? That I have to go swimming?"

"Maybe. I don't know, do some research, see if there's anything on mysterious disappearances in the water."

Dean nodded, immediately starting to think about the potentials for what was going to happen. He looked up at Sam who was now standing against one of the trees. "Give me a few hours. I'll meet you back here." He paused. "Do I need to make a signal or something for when I want you to come back?"

"Nah, I'll be watching. Just get some research done."

"All right." Dean rose to his feet, brushing off the seat of his pants before grabbing his gun protectively. He started to walk away then turned back around, facing Sam. "If you get me killed like you because of this, I'm going to kick your geek ass."

Before he disappeared completely, Sam just shook his head and laughed silently to himself.


	8. The Lake

_Eight_

With the library still closed in such early morning hours, Dean curled up in the backseat of the Impala again and quickly fell asleep. He awoke hours later with the bright morning sunlight burning through his eyelids and elementary kids knocking on the car's window. After he shooed the kids away from his car and checked over the body for any damaging marks, he made a quick stop at a local gas station for breakfast before driving to the local library. As he entered the silent building, still chewing on a prepackaged donut, he was greeted by an older lady who looked up from her paperwork with a bit of surprise.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked, removing her reading glasses from her face.

"I'm new in town, and I was wondering if there were any lakes nearby…to you know, go swimming in with my, um, family," he replied, wiping off the donut's sugar stickiness on his pants.

"Lakes? Oh yes, we have one, but it's certainly not one you'll want to go swimming in," she replied, pushing her wheeled chair back so that she could stand and walk around to the opposite side of her desk.

"Oh?"

"Not a very safe lake at all," the librarian commented with a shake of her tightly wound curls.

"I'd still like to look into it, if that's possible."

"Very possible, indeed. Here, I'll show you right to the town's personal history section. There are plenty of books written about this lake."

"Where's it at from here?"

"About ten miles northeast," the librarian replied. "Hard to get to, though, and out of the way. I would highly avoid vacationing at _that_ lake. No good will come out it, I can tell you that much." She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "You'd be better off going to another place for fun."

After taking Dean to the dusty books in a poorly lit corner, she walked away to help another person and left Dean by himself in the back. As Dean read the yellowed pages, he learned that the lake was believed to be cursed by the majority of residents in the small community. The water was never clear, always lingering with a dismal black color and putrid rotting odor. Piles of what appeared to be inhuman flesh and organs frequently washed onto shore after a heavy rain or harsh winds. When the Loch Ness monster had been a rage in Scotland years ago, a group of bystanders reported seeing monsters in the town's lake as well. In the midst of the craze that the town could be playing host to their very own "Nessie," there were several attempts to map the underwater terrain of the lake. However, all the men on the fives boats that were sent disappeared with their respective vessel. The only trace that was ever found of the men was one of their personally inscribed wedding rings buried in the sand on shore; the ring was found five years after the man went missing. Following so many deaths, the lake was left in peace by those who recognized its fatal greed. There were spotty stories of young children who, not knowing better, ventured near the water only to vanish without a ripple when their parents turned their backs. Rebellious teenagers used to dare each other to take a quick swim, but after many accounts of seeing their friends pulled under by a mysterious force, they also avoided the water all together.

Chewing on the end of his pencil, Dean flipped the yellowed page to a map of the lake completed many years ago. Apparently, one of the boats had survived out on the water when they did a sonar scan, even if all members of the crew died within that following year from "unexplainable causes." The crude map showed a few underwater hills and such, but nothing that could possibly lead Dean to the underworld. However, as he leaned closer to the faded ink, he saw a small circle written in the corner with a man's pinched handwriting that read, "cave" followed by a question mark. He grinned around his pencil and shut the book with a slow satisfaction.

Dean didn't waste further time after discovering that there could be a possibility to enter the underworld without having to commit suicide. He grabbed a phonebook from the library's reference section and scanned the pages for a store that would carry some sort of scuba gear. However, he wasn't entirely surprised to learn that there weren't any special stores designed for extracurricular swimming in the area considering the lake's unpopularity. There were a few resale businesses listed, so Dean placed a few hopeful phone calls. At the last store, he was told that yes, the owner did have a suit and equipment available for sale. It was old, dating back from the days when those crazy fools thought that Nessie was swimming in the water, the man stressed, but all still worked. At the register, Dean plastered a tight smile on his face as the man rambled on about sea beasts and counted Dean's wrinkled fifty dollar bills three times over to assure the correct amount. Dean now had diving gear and plan to get to Sam, which was far better than he had the previous day.

The last time Dean had been scuba diving, he had just graduated from elementary school. His father had trained both Sam and him the basics of the gear and procedures in a local pool one late night. Hopefully, Dean would remember enough to get settled in the lake and his intuitive nature would be able to take control if there was a problem. After all, the only real block to work around would be the breathing part. As he was a strong swimmer, he figured that he would be able to get to the surface for air quickly enough if something went awry with the equipment.

Although the two brothers had agreed to meet in the park again before Dean literally took the plunge, he did not have the time or patience to drive back to the city again. He was afraid that the longer he waited to attempt to get to the underworld, the more rooted Sam would become, which would limit Dean's chances to get him out.

While Dean drove to the lake, with the radio blasting full volume and windows rolled down in the late afternoon wind, he tried to fight off the doubts and worries that were invading his mind. He had come too far to go back now, and if he turned back, he knew that he would never be able to shake the guilt of leaving Sam to the underworld. So, he changed his cassette tape and turned up the music until his head rang with the crashing drums and vibrating guitars. If he was going to die, he would go out with classic rock pounding in his blood.

Since the suit was too small, Dean, wishing he had not eaten that extra donut for breakfast, practically choked himself while trying to squeeze his thick body into the constraining material. The most he was able to wear under the suit were his blue jeans and gray t-shirt, which caused a brief moment of lamentation when he realized that he would be leaving his leather jacket behind. Before he zipped up the suit completely, he tucked a pair of knives into the bottom of his suit legs and two guns into the back of his pants. Even though the firearms made awkward bulges, practically splitting the material of the suit, he considered such weapons to be necessary. He made sure that his car was parked off to the side amongst a group of trees where it wouldn't be found for several days, perhaps weeks, if the lake was really as avoided as the books had said. After locking the doors and grabbing the rest of his diving equipment, he tucked the keys underneath the belly of the car for safekeeping. Straining to bend, he forced his feet into the cracking flippers and checked the pressure in his tank. After fitting the goggles over his eyes and taking one last breath of earthly air, he slipped into the cold water with a shudder.

It took a confused moment of fumbling with the flashlight before a faint beam sliced through the murky water. He treaded for a moment, feeling the rise and fall of the water around him and adjusting his breathing technique with the unfamiliar regulator in his mouth. Being underwater was not a place he was not accustomed to in the least, and his senses were going mad. Thick chunks floated in the water around him and made examining the area difficult. Nevertheless he pushed his way through the water, carrying only the flashlight and a sharp curved blade for protection. Realizing the simplicity of his weapon, he made a firm mental note that if he got back to land, he would invest in some proper underwater battle gear.

As he moved closer to the bottom of the lake, the water became colder, yet clearer. He was able to see a fair distance around him without the cloudy flakes obscuring his vision through the goggles. Unfortunately, he didn't notice anything unusual that would lead him to believe there was an underwater cave until he felt a strong current move past him.

Dean froze in the water, treading carefully and breathing quickly. After waiting a few minutes and feeling nothing more, he continued swimming with the belief that maybe it was just an underwater current. Eventually that was what many of the strange waves from the Loch were labeled following in-depth scientific research. With a determined flick of his flippers he pushed on, sweeping the flashlight back and forth in front of him, until he saw a faint glow not too far in the distance. Heart leaping, he quickly he began to move towards the light that instantly reminded him of the same void that the god had taken Sam through.

Suddenly a large, speeding object smashed into Dean and sent him spiraling through the water. Choking on the mouthpiece, which suddenly felt like no more than a large chunk of plastic between his lips, he fought to maintain his balance and air. As he pointed the flashlight back into the direction from where he was thrown, he saw for the first time the large creature moving towards him.

Dean's eyes widened as he struggled not to scream.

Teeth as big as his hand glinted in the pale light in a mouth that snapped viciously at him. He focused back on the glowing circle in the distance and sped forward, legs pumping and arms pushing. His heart pounded loudly in his ears, drowning out the mad clicks of the beast's teeth as bottom jaw met lower jaw. Breathing was becoming difficult, and his lungs and chest burned fiercely. Then the creature grabbed onto one of his flippers with its row of dagger-like teeth, barely missing Dean's actual foot. Frantically, he shook himself free of the rubber boot, before the monster pushed forward and knocked Dean with a brutal shove of its snout.

As Dean flew away, his flashlight fell out of his hand and swirled to the depths where he could not reach it, leaving him with only the pale glow in the distance to illuminate his underwater world. He was too far down to see the light of the sun as the beast swam towards him, its glinting eye as big as the Impala's steering wheel focusing in on him.

Perhaps it was the sheer fact that he was completely helpless in the water against this beast that caused him to feel so panicked and terrorized as he clawed his way to the circle of light, hearing the hurried hiss of water as the monster plowed after him. It launched itself forward again, managing to get a hold of Dean's leg this time and latching on tightly with a grind of its fatal teeth. Not prepared for underwater combat, he wheeled himself around as best he could, tightly holding the curved blade in his hand before the true extent of his pain could reach his mind. In the creature's massive jaw, his leg was nothing more than a toothpick. Fighting against the resistance of the water, he brought the knife down on its snout with a strong blow that sliced through thick, scaled flesh, which caused the monster to release his mangled leg long enough to pull it toward his body. The pain sprung then, hot and fresh, pulsing with energy as blood seeped into the water and the nerves died. He winced, groaning in agony in the back of his throat and fighting everything that was against him.

As the creature shrieked, blowing large bubbles into the water, Dean hurried towards the light with the beast's distraction. He could barely swim with only one functioning leg and the pain paralyzing the remainder of his limbs, but the thought of Sam and his parents drove him forward. From behind him, there was a predatory scream that vibrated through the water, and he knew that the monster was not far away. The light grew brighter as he approached the circular orb in the watery depths. Above the beast's snarls, quiet voices began to build in volume. The creature lashed forward, and Dean knew that this time would be his last if the monster got to him. He gave one final, agonizing, push of his strength and propelled himself forward through the vortex.

The monster's jaws opened again, and Dean flew.

He fell through the water haphazardly as if he was tumbling down a giant waterfall. He could barely see, and his regulator was viciously ripped from his mouth. Gasping and suffocating, he struggled to breathe and replace his oxygen supply, but with his limbs wildly flailing, he was unable to fully get control of his body. He was smashed against a hard surface and instant pain flashed through his already exhausted body.

As he was losing consciousness, he heard the voices talking around him. All he wanted was sweet oxygen, but when he opened his mouth, cold liquid invaded his lungs like a greedy thief. Instinctively, he gasped again, trying to breathe, but there was no air for him to have. "He's not supposed to be here," the voices whispered. "He made it past the monster. No one ever makes it past the monster."

His leg stopped hurting and the pain seemed to ebb in his body, and Dean slowly realized in his foggy state that he was dying. "Feel how hot he is. He is another warm blood like his brother." His tanks collapsed away from him, leaving him stranded and alone. "The Master will see to him. This is not supposed to be. This is wrong."

Before the world went black, he heard, "He's come for his brother."

Then there was warm water gushing onto his chest and stinging slaps across his cheeks. Someone was frantically screaming his name with every hard thrust against his abdomen. Sputtering and hacking, he was lying on his back with a rocky ceiling swimming in his faded vision. He inhaled sharply, a thin, pinched wheeze of air, and soon he was on his side, vomiting his last meal and water on black sand. A shudder passed through his body, and he was rolled back over onto his back by a pair of strong hands.

Opening his stinging eyes, he was able to discern a fuzzy shape staring down at him. The shape repeated his name and slapped him across the face again. All pain came rushing back to him in full force; his leg throbbed, and his lungs burned. When he finally opened his eyes and focused on the shape in front of him, Sam's face registered instant relief.

"Dean."

He pulled his older brother to a sitting position and threw his arms around him. As Dean fought to calm his coughing, Sam patted him on the back.

Until Dean was quiet, Sam held him tightly.


	9. The Answer

**Author's Note: **_I feel it's only right to warn you that this chapter is fairly graphic. As such, I may raise the rating of the story to "M," although I don't think it's any worse than some of things they've shown on the shown already. I'm wavering on whether or not to up the rating, so if you have an opinion, please let me know. Other than that, I just wanted to provide warning for anyone with a sensitive stomach. I'll also take this chance to thank everyone who writes such wonderful reviews. It's so awesome to read them all. Thank you!_

* * *

_Nine_

After Dean stopped coughing and returned to breathing normally, Sam allowed him to rest on his back, while Sam examined what remained of Dean's leg. Using one of the large hunting knives, Sam sliced away the fabric around the wound to get a better look at what he was dealing with. "What did this?" he asked, holding back his urge to vomit at the sight of Dean's leg turned into raw meat.

"Big creature," Dean winced as beads of sweat popped out on his forehead and upper lip. His hands spasmodically clenched in the sand, trying to grab onto anything to ease the agony ricocheting through his body. Dean had always handled pain better than anyone Sam had ever known, and seeing Dean grimacing so badly, Sam felt a dark pit of hopelessness unfurl in his stomach.

"No shit," Sam remarked. "It chewed the hell out of your leg." After cutting away the rest of the fabric from just above the knee down on Dean, Sam gagged and felt the bitter taste of bile rise high in his throat. Both the tibia and fibula, the two bones in the lower leg, were crushed where the monster's teeth made contact with the leg, leaving larger, broken portions of the bone to protrude through the tangled flesh with serrated ends. The main muscles were shredded, and the skin was jagged and torn. What remained of the lower leg was connected to a crumpled kneecap by a flaying ligament and some awkward, out of place pieces of muscle. Even under the slightest pressure, blood ran quickly over Sam's hand with no thought of beginning to clog. With hands trembling so badly, he thought that he would cut off his own fingers, Sam hastily started tying off what appeared to be the main vessels using the scraps of fabric he had just cut off. From first aid moments with his father, he knew that he was supposed to apply direct pressure to the wound until the bleeding ceased, but he didn't know where to even begin to apply the pressure when his brother's whole leg _was _the wound.

"You remember the first time Dad tried to cook us meatloaf when we went camping?" he continued. He needed to keep Dean alert and talking, lest he lose consciousness and not return. Sam's voice quavered slightly against the acute panic growing in him.

Dean was losing too much blood too fast.

As Sam cinched off what appeared to be a large artery, Dean inhaled sharply with a twisted grimace in response to Sam's question. Uncontrollably, Dean rolled his head in the sand, arching his neck and upper back spasmodically. Although he wasn't screaming as a normal person would have been, there were tears forming at the corners of his pinched eyes.

It was the first time Sam had seen his brother cry from pure pain.

"Your leg looks like that, but worse," Sam said in response to his own comment.

Dean gave a short, strangled bark of laughter. "Worse?"

"If it's at all possible, yeah." Sam glanced back down at Dean's pitiful excuse for a leg. "I'm going to need you cut you out of this diving suit. I think it might be ruining the rest of your body's circulation. Looks like it's too small."

"Sam, dammit, I…the pain…" Dean panted, head rolling and arms thrashing. "Give me something…"

Having nothing to ease Dean's pain, Sam pulled the other knife free from Dean's pant leg and handed it to his brother, who put the end of the knife in his mouth to bite down on. When he opened his eyes for a fraction of a second, Sam saw that they were crazed and bloodshot, wild with agony and fear.

"Just hold still, or I'm going to end up cutting more than the suit," Sam warned, fighting to keep the tremble out of his voice. Carefully, he slipped the blood-smeared blade under the end of Dean's pants and made one harsh upward slash towards his head. The suit easily fell apart at the sides, allowing Dean to inhale deeply to stretch the limits of his worn T-shirt and causing color to flood into his cheeks with every breath he grabbed. After Sam finished cutting the suit off Dean, he looked back at the pieces of Dean's remaining leg.

If they had been in the real world, Sam would have already been to the hospital where the miracles of medicine could have eased Dean's pain and given him a prosthetic leg. But they weren't in the real world, and the closest person to a medical doctor was Sam himself, who gagged with every view of the dying nerves and tried to determine what to do about Dean's leg. Dean's skin was already cool to the touch from loss of blood, and Sam feared that he might be going into shock.

Dean's breathing was raspy, and he sucked air in thin little wheezes that rattled his chest, no longer having the strength for larger gulps of oxygen. "Sammy?" His eyelids were closed, eyes fluttering underneath the thin skin, and his skin was fading quickly.

Deciding not to object to the nickname for once, Sam answered, "Yeah?" He hadn't meant for his voice to crack.

"Next time one of us gets to die pain free…" Dean whispered. "_I_ volunteer. Y…You can be the one to swim through Hell to get to…_me_."

Sam's eyes moved from Dean's graying face to his destroyed leg. The lower half, ruined beyond use, had a larger surface area that was losing more blood than Sam could apply pressure to. There were too many open blood vessels for him to stop the bleeding of. With nausea rising in his stomach, he looked from the hunting knife to the thin bridge of ligament and muscle between the mangled part of the leg to the upper, healthier part.

Regretting the fact that he had gone to school for law, Sam decided that if he cut off the lower half of the leg in a crude amputation there would be fewer vessels for him to staunch. He could apply direct pressure to the stump that would remain of Dean's leg until the bleeding stopped. From there, he figured, he would wrap the pieces of Dean's wetsuit around the leg.

However, Dean would be completely unable to walk on his own, Sam argued. Then again, he wasn't doing any walking as it was, and Dean was already growing dangerously cold and pale from the blood loss. There was no right answer, and Sam knew that whatever he chose, it would not be the right decision.

Lifting the knife, Sam pressed the sharp blade down against the frayed ligament, biting his lower lip. "Dean, hang on, okay? This is going to hurt." If Dean heard him, he gave no response and instead shuddered from an unknown chill. Whispering a silent apology, Sam struggled not to vomit and positioned the knife.

"Stop."

The knife wavered, a scraping pendulum above a pit.

"I will break the rules for him."

Sam turned, pivoting awkwardly in his crouched position, and looked to see who was addressing him.

The gatekeeper, his hood removed, stood behind Sam and stared down at the wounded Dean. It was the first time Sam had seen the man's face, and he was relieved that the man did not look like the god who had first taken them away from the real world. Instead of the finely cut black hair and goatee as the god of the underworld wore, the gatekeeper had long gray hair that fell down his shoulders and crumpled around the contours of his hood. He had a pointed beard and fierce, questioning eyes.

"What rules?" Sam asked, caught between rising to his feet to fully face the gatekeeper and remaining low and beside Dean's unconscious form. "What do you mean?"

The man glanced over at Sam, as if realizing for the first time of his existence. "The rules were broken for you to exist. I will break the rules for him to exist," he said, motioning to Dean, whose eyes were crinkled in pain and was sipping shallow breaths from the cool air.

"I don't understand. Why are you doing this?"

"You came as a living here. This was not supposed to be. Rules of all were broken for a trade of sacrifice. Your brother will die in a world where he does not belong. And now I will break rules of the ages to save his life as the one in power broke the rules to save your mother's life."

Before Sam could question further, the gatekeeper raised his hand over Dean's limp body. The man focused on Dean's leg, concentrating heavily, and suddenly, Dean's body leapt off the sand with a jolt. When his form was still again, his leg was whole and clean. Where Sam had cut the blue jeans, the material was still ragged and bloody, but the skin itself, while scarred and bruised, was mended into one smooth sheet around the muscle and bone. Dean's wound looked to be years old, and Sam's head spun.

As the man turned to leave, bowing his head, Sam clumsily leapt to his feet, stumbling slightly in his haste to rise.

"Wait!" he cried. "How can I get out of here? Help me now, please."

The man turned, acknowledging Sam's request. He lifted his eyes to meet Sam's, and in that brief moment of eye contact, Sam saw what he was supposed to do.

"No!" Disgust overlaid by terror flooded into his body, and Sam shook his head furiously, breaking eye contact and the future he would have to commit. "No, I can't."

The gatekeeper's expression did not change as he spoke, "Break his rules, and only then will you live." Following his words, the man disappeared from his location near by the boys and reappeared closer to the shore, where he pulled the dead souls from the water. Sam remained staring, head spinning and stomach turning, until he heard Dean coughing below him.

Crouching down next to Dean, Sam offered a supporting hand, which Dean angrily shoved away. He coughed red tinged phlegm onto the sand for a moment before he was able to regain control of his shaking body. After pushing himself to a sitting position, he looked to his younger brother.

"Sam?"

Dean's eyebrows furrowed into a knot on his forehead in confusion, and he ran his hand over the hairless skin on his leg, etched in deep scars from the monster's teeth. He was still sitting on the bloody diving suit, and the sand surrounding his leg remained wet with his blood. "Didn't I—What just happened?"

"You were missing a leg."

"Right." Dean scratched his damp hair. "What's going on?"

"Long story," Sam replied with a sigh, deciding it best not to go into details right then.

"Where's all the scuba stuff?"

"Must have been lost when you came in. Nothing came with you besides the suit and half a flipper."

"_Everything's_ gone? Even the oxygen tank?" Dean asked incredulously, eyes widening.

"Yeah, everything."

Dean groaned impatiently and with a slight tint of irritation. "Besides the fact I'm totally gearless, I'm also hairless, now? Dammit. I look like a chick with a bad wax job."

Sam, rolling his eyes with a sigh, stood to his feet. "Can you walk?"

"I think so," Dean said, pushing himself up with a slight wobble. It took a moment to obtain his balance, as if he had been drinking too much and stood too fast. "Whoa, I'm getting these out of here, too. Hurting my back," he muttered. Out of the back of his pants, he produced two guns, one of which he handed to Sam. "You get the rock salt one. I've got silver bullets. I don't know which one will work the best, so I packed what I could." Then he noticed the bloody knife in Sam's hand. "I see you've found the knives. And I've been…_biting_ on the other one?" Without waiting for Sam to reply, Dean looked around at his new setting and whistled lowly. "So this is the underworld? Damn."

"This is just the place where the newly dead souls arrive," Sam explained. "So far as I can tell, anyway. There's more than just this."

"We've faced some weird ass places, but I think this one comes out on top."

"Yeah, well, considering we've never actually been able to count as technically dead…" Sam said and began to move towards the set of steps leading up to the red desert environment. As he walked away, Dean gave one final glance to the lake that had nearly destroyed him and hurried to catch his younger brother.

"Hey, wait up," he called. Sam stopped to face Dean. Behind them a new group of souls approached, mangled from what appeared to be a car accident of drunk drivers. Before Dean could continue talking, one of the souls approached him and rested his hand on Dean's shoulder.

"Have you seen my girl?" the young teenager asked. Half of his face was missing, scraped away against asphalt, and when he talked, a trickle of blood dribbled over his torn lower lip.

"Talk to that man over there," Sam replied, seeing Dean's eyes grow large. After the confused teenager had moved away, Sam turned to Dean and attempted to be nonchalant. "You were saying?"

Dean shook his head, trying to clear it. "Whoa. That's what you're dealing with down…up…_wherever_ here?"

"Yeah, did you see how confused he was?"

"Yeah."

"Everybody here is like that. They just…they don't quite understand what's happened to them. Dean, you and I know that we could be dead."

"That's what I want to talk to you about."

"What?" Sam asked, confused.

"Hold out your hand, palm up."

"Dean, what are you doing?"

Before Dean could answer, he grabbed Sam's wrist in one hand and pressed the tip of his hunting knife to one of Sam's fingers. Although he did not apply a great deal of pressure, the blade was fatally sharp and a bright drop of blood appeared on Sam's calloused skin. More surprised than hurt, Sam yanked his hand away from Dean's grasp.

"What was that for?" he asked angrily, wiping his blood away on his pants.

"You're not dead," Dean grinned as if this was a great achievement.

"Of course I am. I didn't drown like you nearly did when I was pulled out of the water before. I don't need oxygen like you. I'm _dead_, Dean."

"You're just as much alive as I am. Somebody's been messing with your head to make you _think_ you're dead with no hope of leaving." Seeing that Sam wasn't completely convinced, Dean continued, "Ghosts don't bleed, do they? Tell me, when have we ever encountered a ghost that doesn't only have warm skin like you, but blood _and_ a pulse? Tell me, and I'll knock it off."

Reluctantly, Sam was forced to answer in a mutter, "We haven't."

"Exactly. You're not dead at all. You're alive, too. So, now that means that yes, you _can_ be killed, but even better than that? You can go home just like me." Dean smirked, happier than a man who had just had his leg eaten by an unnamed underwater terror should have been. "And, we're walking out of this damn place…_together_."

Before Sam could point out that Dean had just entered the dreaded, emotional territory he so often avoided with a passion, his older brother punched him the shoulder and pushed past him to bound up the stairs, cut jeans and all.


	10. The Door

_Ten_

At first Dean was mostly silent and chewed on his lower lip in quiet contemplation while he walked through the underworld with Sam only a few steps in front. He was still thinking about everything he had just undergone and more importantly, how they were supposed to get out. They had been wandering for what seemed like an eternity, and Dean's legs were starting to ache; selfishly, he wished for his car.

They had started in the familiar, red desert environment before moving through more rocky caverns that led them to unrecognizable places. There were only stones and cliffs with no other forms of life. The only change through it all was the color and texture of the surfaces. With both brothers equally frustrated with their lack of progress, they were starting to become argumentative with each other. As the time passed, Sam's silence began to encourage loud yammering from Dean.

"You got any idea on how to get out of here?" Dean finally asked when they stopped for rest on top of a dark plateau that appeared to be made of black polished marble. He sat down, dangling his legs over the edge and looking down at the hills they had climbed over for the past countless hours. There was no moon or stars in the dusk above, and Dean wondered if he would ever see sunlight again. His body hurt, and his throat was dry from thirst.

"Yeah, I do, but I don't…" Sam's voice died on a hollow breeze, and he turned away from Dean with arms crossed.

"You don't what?"

"I don't know if it's going to work."

"Don't give me this shit," Dean snapped, sounding harsher than he meant, and he rose to his feet to stand behind Sam. "You don't know how to get out of here? Do you realize how much longer we could be down here? We could _die_ down here at this rate!"

"It's not my idea, anyway. The gatekeeper showed me...I just don't like it." Sam sighed heavily, shoulders dropping in defeat, and he reluctantly told Dean what had been revealed to him.

"The _gatekeeper_? You mean that creepy old dude by the lake? He _showed_ you this idea?" Dean's voice was an incredulous crescendo of anger and mockery.

"We don't have any other options!" Sam argued. "I don't like it any better than you do, but Dean, we've got nothing else."

"This isn't an idea, Sam, it's insanity You're talking about going against the god again. And, in case you've forgotten, he kicked our asses last time. _Kicked_ our _asses,_" Dean carefully annunciated to fully remind Sam. "I'm all up for a challenge, but Jesus…that's not a challenge, you're talking suicide. Do you remember just how badly he beat us down and that was with our best weapons on earth when we were _healthy_ and kicking?"

Sam grimaced, eyes obscured by his shaggy brown hair. "I remember."

"I'm hungry. I'm tired, and I want to get out, but dammit, I'm not up for this kind of fight and neither are you. You're weaker than I am."

"I know."

"Then what makes you think we should go and visit him? He's the last person I want to see. Ever."

"He brought me here, he can take us out," Sam responded, glancing behind him at Dean. "Plain and simple. He's the only one with that kind of power around here. So far as we know, there's no other way out."

"Dammit all, I think I'd rather take my chances with fishzilla out in the lake than do this shit. Getting turned into fishy kibbles sounds like a much better way to die than by a pissed off psycho god."

Sam bit down hard enough on his jaw to cause a muscle to twitch in his cheek, and he felt the acidic blush of anger rising in him. For once however, Dean was not the source of his irritation. It was the clearly unfair situation they had been given, and now the only solution to removing themselves from such a problem was a path neither brother was willing to completely accept. He held out his hands in a welcoming gesture and turned back to Dean, who had crossed his arms and was staring off into the distance with pursed lips. "Are you coming or not?" Sam asked Dean, who was pouting like an angry child that has just been sent to the corner of the room for punishment.

Grumbling, Dean moved next to Sam. "Remind me to ask Mom and Dad something when we get back."

"What's that?"

"If they ever have another kid, it damn well better be a girl. I want a freakin' sister instead of an annoying brother from now on so that the biggest crisis I have to deal with is what clothes to pick out for Barbie."

Sam smiled, sensing that the worst of their confrontation had passed. If Dean was able to make wisecracks, then he truly was no longer as frustrated as before. Perhaps with the tension relieved, they would both be able to think clearer now.

"So, genius," Dean smarted, "we've got to find the god. And how do we do that?"

"We don't."

"Oh?"

"He'll find us," Sam replied and braced himself for Dean's response as he climbed down the ledge.

Dean's answer, as expected, was a string of stunned expletives.

With both of their watches no longer functioning, the brothers quickly lost track of time, but it seemed like hours later when they rounded a corner with a sight that stole their breath. There was single door in the middle of nowhere, and both felt the fingers of terror sweep up their spines. When Sam viewed the door, he saw the door that led to the bedroom that Jessica and he shared and where she eventually died. He saw the flames of their room licking up the wooden frame as Dean dragged him out the room with Jess' blood still on his forehead. To Dean, the door was from the old house where their mother died so many years ago. He saw Sam, young and innocent, in his arms when he ran from the heat with his father's voice spurring him forward. Touching the door for both Sam and Dean was a frightening idea as the faces of their deceased loves flooded into their brains.

"I think," Sam said, swallowing the rising lump in his throat, "that's where we need to go."

Dean nodded and squeezed the gun tighter in his sweaty fist. His answer, a short "yup" proceeded by a pinched sigh, offered little encouragement to the panicked Sam.

"It's the door of death," Sam whispered.

"Oh how clichéd, Mr. Obvious. Let's just get this over with. The longer we stand here looking at it, the more I want to get the hell away from it."

"You want to open it?"

"Do you?" Dean asked.

"I asked you first."

"Well, I'm not going to have you open it and get separated _again_. That game's getting a bit old."

"Fine then, we'll do it together," Sam offered, searching for a compromise.

"How sweet," Dean snipped sarcastically, but Sam knew that he didn't mean the cynicism to be as bitter as it sounded. They were both equally terrified of opening the door and discovering what lay behind it.

As they placed their hands on the doorknob, Dean muttered under his breath, "And now we have to hold hands. Isn't this just the most cozy—"

Sam, ignoring the comment, whispered, "I guess this is it," and then they turned the handle together.

The door swung open with a pulse of blinding light, and Sam raised his hands to his eyes to shield them from the intensity of the rays. Without physically moving, they were thrown forward on their hands and knees into a long hallway by an invisible force. There were numerous doors on both sides of them, all appearing to be the same one carved out of the same dark black wood, only with different colored and shaped keyholes to distinguish them. The hallway itself was poorly lit, but there was a bright illumination from the end where it opened up into what appeared to be a large room.

"I say we start breaking down the doors," Dean suggested in an eager fashion. "One by one. You take this side, I take the other."

"We don't have time for that. Besides, I don't think these doors are what we want. If there's a door to transport us back to Earth, it's not going to be this simple." Sam shook his head. "We need something better."

"Fine, we'll try the big shiny room down there, but hey, if you're wrong, you owe me. Twenty bucks. Or you buy me a new pair of jeans after you chopped the hell out of these."

With the guns drawn, they walked down the hallway until they exited into the main room at the end. The room was exceedingly tall, and Dean couldn't see the ceiling as he peered upward where harsh white light filtered down. The room, octagonal shaped, had only one way out and that was through the hallway they just came. There was a platform that was a little more than waist high in the middle of the room, and the only object was a massive mirror that spanned the height of the entire wall it was mounted against.

"I think this is it," Sam said, pulling Dean with him as he moved swiftly to the glistening mirror. Just as he was within a few feet of the glassy frame, there came an unmistakable voice from behind him.

"I was wondering what would take you both so long."

The two brothers turned together as the god of the underworld appeared on the platform, towering above them. He was wearing long black robes, and his pale skin seemed to glow with an interior light. The hair that had been neatly trimmed on earth was now shoulder length and glistening under the light from above. Approaching Sam and Dean, he held out his hands in what could be assumed to be a welcoming manner for those ignorant to his ways.

"Sam. Dean," he said to the both of them with a smile. "So good to see you again." His eyes darted around the massive room. "Welcome to my world, and please," he continued in that same soothing tone, "make yourselves comfortable."


	11. The Falling

_Eleven_

Dean pushed himself in front of Sam, protection for his younger brother surging inside as he focused his gun on the god, who continued to talk nonchalantly. Sam hissed a word of warning to Dean's back, but now that Dean was facing the monster that had taken his brother, he was oblivious to all. His arms twitched with anger, and he pressed a slippery finger tight against the trigger of his gun.

The deity seemed to ignore Dean's rage and circled the brothers like a vulture waiting for its last meal. "Now, Dean, I have to ask _you_ simply because Sam's been with me all this time, but how is your mother doing? Is she well? Is she everything you hoped for?"

"Go to hell, bitch."

The god's eyes flashed with a spark of fire that sent a chill down Sam. "Answer me, Dean. _Tell me_ just how your mother is," the god demanded in a rumble causing reverberations to run through the floor and up the boys' flesh.

Uncontrollably, Dean lurched forward as if he had been grabbed around the chest by an unseen hand and fell to his knees with a dull thud in his kneecaps. "She's fine," he whispered to the floor, his lips twisting awkwardly in a strained fashion.

"Make eye contact with _me_," the deity continued.

It was obvious that Dean was fighting the force that had gained control of his body when his muscles shuffled gawkily until he was looking up at the god above him. The veins in his neck and face bulged with strain, and a low gleam of perspiration spread across his skin.

"And are you happy with her being _alive_?"

"Yes." Dean's voice sounded choked, and the god's eyes glinted malevolently as he watched Dean struggle to control his own strength.

"Then what in the world are you doing _here_?" the god asked, moving down to Dean. He crouched in front of Dean and clutched the human face in his immortal hands, thumbs digging into Dean's cheeks. "I watched you cry yourself to sleep for _months_ after she died. I watched your father lose his mind when she died. Your life was destroyed because of her death, so I gave her back to restore your family. And yet, when your mother, your savior, returns, you still come into _my_ domain. Do you regret her presence that much? Are you really that incompetent of a human?"

"Let him go!" Sam cried and aimed the rock salt filled gun directly at the god, who grinned at him and released Dean indifferently.

"You dare to shoot me with what? Salt? Simple molecules of earthly substances? You tried with silver to bring me damage before, and I was not harmed. Shoot me now, when I am more powerful than I was on Earth, and you will be sorely disappointed in your results."

Sam knew it was a challenge, but he fired anyway. It was better to have shot and be wounded than not to shoot at all and to watch Dean being hurt. As the particles of salt sped towards the god, he raised one pale hand and grabbed the pieces like he was catching a ball. Tightly, he clutched his fingers and opening it in a flurry, he sent the particles hurling back at Sam. The force caught Sam in the stomach, slamming him back against one of the walls with an uncomfortable grunt, where sharp bonds leapt from the wall and latched onto his arms and legs to hold him firmly in place.

While Dean fought to stand, the god, without looking towards him, gave a swift flick of his hand and sent Dean spinning in the other direction where similar restraints held him fast against the wall.

Leaning forward into Sam's face, the deity examined him with a medical precision. "You stupid human. You think you can outsmart someone like me? A _god_?"

Sam twisted against his tight holds, but they cut into his flesh the more he writhed and small patches of blood quickly blossomed under his clothes. "Your strength is nothing in this world. The strength of flesh and blood is miniscule to what I can accomplish." The god turned away from Sam and moved swiftly to the middle of the room, his large robes billowing behind him on an unfelt breeze. "Now, here's what I fail to understand. You willingly allow me to give you your mother back, fully comprehending the trade that would be crafted. You humans cease to be satisfied; your lust knows no boundaries. I made you a deal, and you do not hold to your end of the bargain."

"Neither do you," Dean spat from across the room.

"You dare to insult me?" the god raged. As the volume of his voice increased with his long strides toward Dean, tongues of fire quickly sprang up on the walls around the brothers. He hurried to Dean and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, snapping the bonds and lifting him off the ground so that they were eye to eye. "You, the liar and thief? You lie to yourself that you love your mother, when in truth your brother is the only one worth protecting for you. And then you search for your mortal sibling and invade my world like none before you?" Dean kicked his legs, struggling to find the trigger on his gun and hold himself upright so the god would not choke him in his grasp. "I could kill you right now, do you realize that?" When Dean didn't respond, the god threw his body across the room like a pitiful rag doll tossed by an angry child.

There was a sharp snap as Dean landed awkwardly on his arm, breaking it in the middle. His bellow was a mix of pure pain and obscenities, and he irrationally leveled his gun at the deity and shot until he was empty. Instead of hitting the god, the bullets reversed their route and blasted through Dean's skin. While he was not yet fatally wounded, blood poured from his wounds, and his body danced on the ground from the impact.

"Dean!" Sam cried, fighting to push himself from the wall. With the sound of Sam's voice, the god whirled in that direction, and in a flash, he was standing beside the younger man. He grabbed Sam's hair in one vengeful fist, sending lines of pain down Sam's bleeding spine. "Look at your brother now! Look at him bleed and writhe! You thought he was all powerful. Is this your hero, now?" When Sam refused to look, he twisted Sam's head violently in the direction of Dean, who was shaking on the ground. "Look, I tell you! You will obey me now, if not before!"

As Sam looked upon his brother, bleeding and broken, he wished he never would have brought Dean to save him. They both would have been better if things had remained the way they were, where Dean lived with their parents and Sam wandered alone in the underworld. While they were not satisfied in such a separation, at least they were alive, which was more than their current states were going to lead them.

Struggling to stand and breathe, Dean raised a palm to his eyes and left a blood streak across his forehead. Sam then noticed Dean's hand moving to the boot where he had stored his knife after they had left the lake environment. Suddenly, a flurry of hope rose in Sam, and he focused back on the god. The fight was not over yet.

"You lied," Sam said to the deity through gritted teeth. "You lied to us when you made the bargain in the first place."

"Did I?" The god feigned ignorance. The flames around Sam were hot and licked at his hair, and he knew that he did not have much time if he was left pinned against the wall. When the god began to speak again, he lurched forward, mouth frozen in a silent scream, as Dean's head appeared from behind the god where a knife was plunged into the immortal back.

Thick black blood spouted from the wound, soaking Dean's hands and hair.

"Uphold this deal," Dean hissed, wincing with every movement of his broken arm. Sam, his bonds weakened, tumbled forward, and Dean's knife clattered to the ground, falling out of the deity's back. There was a moment of silence in which the flames sizzled against the wall, and the god stumbled toward the platform in the middle of the room.

While Dean helped Sam to his feet, the god stood under the bright illumination falling down from above. Blood, both his own and the god's trickled over Dean's eye as he looked up at Sam and whispered, "I hope you were right."

Sam squeezed Dean's shoulder in a vain attempt of reassurance. "Just trust me."

As soon as the brothers had reached the mirror once again, not knowing where it would take them besides away from this hell, the god, fully healed, swiveled around in a powerful storm of rage and fire.

"You!" he bellowed at Dean, who had his good arm interlocked with Sam so that they could support each other. The deity extended one opened hand at Dean. "You are not worth my trouble!" With a powerful gesture, he snapped his fingers shut in a tight fist.

There was a choking sound, a strangled cry of pain as Dean's eyes rolled back in his head. While his face twisted in pain and fright, his fingers spasmodically tried to grab the edges of Sam's coat to hold himself upright.

He collapsed.

Sam yelled something unintelligent and turned himself on the god. "Leave him alone! It's me you want anyway! Let him go!"

"It's too late," the god said. "Internal hemorrhaging has begun, and his blood will soon leak from his body until he is completely drained. And what would I want with you? You consider yourself important because I brought you across as a body and not as a soul? Because I made allowances in my world for you to exist? You are only human just like your pitiful brother. Only _human_."

Sam, no longer caring what happened to him, lunged at the god with Dean's knife outstretched and heart willing to kill. If this was how it had to end, he was going to end it with a fight, for he would not let his brother's death be forgotten. Aiming for the god's head, he proceeded to plunge the knife deep into the skull. Before the knife could penetrate the god's skin, the deity gave a quick snap of his hand, and the sharpened blade aimed itself on Sam.

Unable to stop himself, Sam was still clutching the handle as the silver metal impaled itself into the warm flesh of his abdomen. It sliced through his warm flesh and muscles until it was buried deep within his organs, and Sam's body convulsed in a curl around the gash. He gasped sharply from the sudden intrusion and pain, and he staggered, gathering blood between his trembling fingers.

He fell.

And the god waited.

Sam's vision wavered, and he grimaced as the point of the knife jutted against his innards, until he felt cool fingers tugging at the collar of his shirt.

"Sammy."

Dean, groggy and weak, pulled Sam onto his lap and cradled his younger brother in his arms like he had when they fled from the blaze that killed their mother. Around them, the flames were hot and suffocating as they had been years ago, but this time they could not outrun the demon's fire. Warm blood gushed from the wound in Sam's stomach onto Dean's heavy hand that pressed itself on his abdomen to stop the knife from tearing further into him. His innards felt cold and slimy, twisting and shifting abnormally within him.

It would not be much longer.

When Dean spoke, a small trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth that he tried to catch with his one good arm. What he could not wipe away fell in small droplets on Sam's forehead below his dark hairline. Dean's skin was already cold and fading, but he would support himself long enough to see Sam go. "Sammy," he whispered again. His voice was rattled, and he struggled to cough, but his body was collapsing. There was blood pooling in his ears, smearing at the corners of his eyes and dribbling from his nose. It seeped from underneath his fingernails, and Dean knew that he was dying a death only a true god could give. Yet he needed only a few minutes so that his younger brother would not die alone in this hell.

Sam, too, could barely speak as his blood leaked through Dean's trembling fingers, forming a crimson pool around them. The red liquid was thick and dark, sticky against their skin and heavy against their souls. "I'm sorry," he told Dean, shaking his head. "I shouldn't have—"

"We tried," Dean responded through the salty fluid in his own mouth. "It'll be okay, you'll see, it has to be okay."

Dean clutched his younger brother in his lap until Sam's eyes closed, and his head tipped clumsily on the limp neck. His long brown hair bobbed against his older brother's knee, and his pale fingers loosened their grip on Dean's hand, making crimson trails across Dean's skin.

Dean knew that he could leave now.

As the blood trickled from Dean's nose and eyes, he thought of all the moments they had together, and how at least they had been able to die together. Fate had given them that much after all they had been through. Secretly he was grateful that Sam had died first because at least Sam had been spared the pain of seeing his brother die before him. Dean's only regret was that he did not save Sam as he had promised him.

As a comforting warmth spread over Dean's bleeding limbs, he pulled Sam closer to him in a tight embrace. His brother's body was already dead, but he would not let him go. Dean closed his eyes, listening to the slowing thud of his own heart disappearing in his ears, and he knew that he could fight no longer. Sam would be waiting for him on the other side now.

The god of the underworld watched the older brother slump forward and fall across his younger sibling's chest. The eldest man's arms were tight around the brunette youth's body, and they held him close in the protection he was unable to give the younger Winchester in real life. The god patiently waited until the puddle of blood around the bodies no longer grew and their skin started to fade. The light of life within the boys was fully extinguished. As their souls finally left their bodies, free of their mortal flesh, the god bent his head and smiled.

It was over at last.


	12. The Darkness

_Twelve_

There was darkness. Absolute and still, infinite and encompassing, it was the night of the world.

- - - - -

"Master, they were the only ones who were worth the fight in the end. We will never find a finer pair."

There were the whispers. Unheard by all except the two who spoke, the whispers traveled back and forth. They reflected upon the past events, so tragic and true.

The superior spoke in his genteel lilt, "For humans, they were above many in our years. It was nearly a pity to see them go, but such business had to be delivered."

"You might have spared their lives."

"And why?" Quiet cadence of voice. Controlled and even, completely dissimilar to the raging demon from before. "They were humans no matter how great their bravado and how little their fear. You know we could not have let them live as such. It would have destroyed us all. Destroyed our world."

"It was your decision to make, sir."

There was a pause, a soft sigh in the singing darkness and humming silence. "Dispose of the bodies before decay creeps in. Flesh does not belong here."

"To where?"

"Back with the living. Let the parents bury their children."

"Yes, sir."

- - - - -

The bodies were gently carried to Earth, where they were laid with tenderness beneath a tall tree that cast shadows under the evening sun. The older brother's blood had been wiped away, and the piercing gash through the younger's abdomen was smoothed over. Faces relaxed and eyes closed, they appeared to be sleeping, void of their fatal wounds to all who looked so that their death would forever stay a mystery to their human peers. Their stillness would not be questioned before the next morning, and they would remain in their prone positions until the dawn broke on that fateful day.

The crouching servant rose to his feet and watched the sun sink in the distance. It was a passionate inferno of heat and light, setting with the colors of blood and fire, and the man looked down at the brothers he had returned to their glorious world. While the sun blazed and burned, smearing dark shadows over the tanned and rough skin of these humans he had brought across, he knew that the shade upon their faces would not last forever. As he replaced his hood to cover his immortal features, he thought of how the sun would shine again for these special humans. Selfishly he wanted to steal another glance at the men who did not realize that their hour was quickly approaching, but he was forced to return to his world before his time ran dry as the master would not permit him extra moments for this simplistic task.

The earthly rapture would come soon enough.

- - - - -

In the darkness of the night, a wife flinched against her husband. Arms wrapped around one another, he felt her shudder and his eyes opened slowly to see hers staring back at him in horror. He frowned, creases lining the tender flesh of his forehead. "What's wrong?" he asked, as she released her embrace and climbed out of the bed.

She walked to the window of the room and looked out across the parking lot, flooded with the eerie illumination of a flickering streetlight. The world was still, dotted only by the sounds of crickets and the hiss of the rolling wind. Her husband, now worried, came from behind her and rested his large hands on her shoulders. "Mary?" he whispered. She didn't speak, and her breath rose in hurried hitches, and then fell quickly as she tried to calm her nerves. Underneath her husband's hold, her body shivered in fear.

"They're gone," she finally replied to the window. Her speaking, her breath, made a small cloud of condensation against the cool glass, and she traced the wooden pane with her fingers, outlining the paths of the stars.

"What do you mean?" His voice was low, deep and powerful, but also tender and soothing to his wife, who now had a small tear trickling over the side of her face. The single tear ran down the curve of her smooth cheek before dribbling off the edge of her chin and melting into her nightgown.

"The boys."

"But," John faltered, searching for words to comfort his wife, "they just went away for a little while. Sam…yes. But Dean? No, not Dean. He'll be back."

However, Mary shook her head, golden hair trembling with her body, and she curled her arms around herself, around her abdomen where she carried her sons so many years ago. For a moment, she felt the kick of their fetal feet within her, and the smell of their skin when they were babies. She heard their laughs, but she also heard their cries emerging from womb and carrying them away. Pressing her lips tightly together and holding back her tears, she turned to meet John's eyes.

"No," she whispered, her voice hollow and chilled, "they're dead. Our sons are dead."

- - - - -

The voices, a cacophony of pitches and timbres, chattered amongst one other when they saw the bodies leave their world. Such an event had never been done before, and they knew the laws had been shattered. Most of souls had been gone too long to remember how to be human and had witnessed the scene with only detached shock that an atrocity as such could be occurring now. But, those who remembered their human emotions had wept when the brothers had died, the tragedy that it was, and they were now afraid, not only for the human boys, but for themselves as well. With such rules broken, they did not know what was to happen.

- - - - -

"Did you take them back?"

"Yes."

The man was pleased with his subordinate's answer, and he pressed his hands, washed of the mortals' blood, together as if in prayer. "Good. And they appear human again?"

"As if sleeping."

"Then no one will know that they are dead at all. It may take days for their fellow humans to even notice their presence. After that, their death will be unknown forever." His voice was calm, soothing to the ear if one had fallen into his entrancing intonation. There was no indication that he had murdered two innocents in cold blood not so long ago. "The greatest supernatural event of their times, and they are not alive to solve it. How simply ironic."

"Yes, sir." He was agreeing only because he knew that he was expected to, not because he believed the master's words.

"I hated to see them die as such, but there was no other way to win. You understand that, don't you?"

"While I understand it, there is no truth to be held."

Flash of confusion, perhaps fear in the one who possessed so much power in his world. However, he did not turn and talked to the lands below him, paying no heed to his sudden worry. "What do you mean?"

"No one has ever died here, have they?"

"Of course they have. Every mortal here is dead, as they call such a state."

"That is not what I mean," the gatekeeper answered to the other's back, bowing his head away from the god. He thought of the sunset before he spoke again, that beautiful dazzling sunset and how even more glorious the sunrise would be the next morning. "The soul has never fled the flesh here."

"Normally there are not bodies in the underworld. So for one to be extinguished? No, this is the first occasion."

"Then what of their souls, sir?"

"They will return here. It is the proper order," the god responded. In all his might and brilliance, he could not see where the gatekeeper was leading him and that he had fallen into the ploy of his servant.

"Are you confident in this?"

"Of course. The souls will go to the world the farthest from their bodies—" The god halted his words, realizing the terror that would possibly occur. "No," he whispered, turning to face the gatekeeper, who smiled back at the master.

"Oh, yes, sir." He lifted his eyes to the horror-stricken face of the deity who had committed his own undoing through the shed of two mortals' blood. "They've already won."


	13. The Brothers

_Thirteen_

An overwhelming force blew him backwards, away from his dying body and away from the god who stood above in triumph. He was sent spinning through the air, wanting to return to his blood soaked skin and rise one last time to spit in the deity's face. But an unnatural power hurled him away from the body as the rules decreed. It was in the laws of death that the soul was to be sent as far away from its origin of death as was physically possible. When people died on Earth, the souls were sent to the underworld. However, his brother's body and his own body had been killed in the underworld, and the farthest place from the land of the dead was the land of the living.

He was returning to Earth.

He was vaguely aware of traveling through the lake while so many confused souls were struggling, shoving, pushing against him in the escape from their own bodies. His human body would not have been able to swim out, for the water was truly only the road for the souls to pass between the worlds on their final journey. However, never before had there been a soul to leave the underworld through the lake as he was doing and as his brother had done. Tumbling against such a great drive, he burst out of the dark water in a frantic upsurge, believing that he had arrived on Earth once more, but unable to see it with his nonexistent eyes. Like a seed on the wind, he was carried by a force superior to him.

The momentum brought him above his human form, sensing the disruption between soul and body. Never should those two entities be divided in the same world, and if they were separated, they were to be reunited as soon as possible. Thus it was that the force lifted the brother's soul a little higher before slamming it back into his fleshy body.

There was a blast of thunder inside his mind, and when he cried out, the earth's air tasted bittersweet against his dry tongue. He sucked in the air again, blessed oxygen in his expanding lungs, and he could hear his heart pounding, deep and alive. The nerves sparked with lightning when his brain flashed to life, electrifying his extremities with a trembling sensation that rippled through his body. Underneath flawless skin, his muscles were heavy and strong, filled with the rich blood his heart was pumping through them.

It was ecstasy in every form, unsurpassed and endless. Life had never been so delicious, so euphoric and divine.

As they opened their eyes into the piercing morning sun, the brothers untangled their limbs from one another. Sam was placed carefully in Dean's arms, while Dean's head rested on his younger brother's shoulder in a grim parody of their death. Feeling the other's warm weight, they separated in a sluggish fashion, adjusting to the use of their arms and legs once again, before they pressed their backs against the tree and formed a space between them. Sam blinked, then quickly skimmed his hands over his stomach and lifted his shirt, searching for the knife's damage. Long calloused fingers danced across taunt and tan flesh where his own blade had murdered him. When he found no scars, no blood, and no wounds, he stared at Dean quizzically, eyebrows knotted in confusion and disbelief.

"It really worked," he told his older brother in a near gasp, dazed eyes peeking out beneath curling thatches of deep brown hair.

Dean was patting his own body down with trembling hands, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, the pulse of his heart, and the warmth of his skin, amazed that their plan had succeeded. "I don't believe it. Dammit, I don't believe it."

"Believe it," Sam grinned through a rim of white teeth, "because we're back."

"I just hope that god doesn't come after us once he realizes that we had the upper hand in this one." Dean rubbed the side of his head, searching for a headache that no longer existed after his body had been healed on the journey back to Earth. "I don't think I'm up for _another_ round of dying. Once is enough in this lifetime."

Sam shrugged a bit clumsily, still acclimating to the weight of his body again. "He won't. We'll end up there sooner or later," he responded, referring to their eventual death. "Besides, we know how to beat him now, so what good is there in getting us again?"

Dean shook his head and looked down at his hand, which he curled into a tight fist, watching the muscles flexing in near amazement. He chuckled underneath his breath, a throaty sound that pleased him with the vibrations in his chest. "Who would have thought the only way to beat the god of death was to die? Still," he admitted after a reluctant moment, "that scared the shit out of me."

Pretending to look astonished, Sam laughed. "Who? You? Mr. I-Laugh-In-The-Face-Of-Death?"

"Oh come, on, don't tell me that watching yourself bleed to death, you didn't have doubts that this plan wouldn't work."

"Maybe I did. But, I figured if I was going, you'd be right there with me."

Dean laughed, shaking his head but grinning nonetheless. "Dammit, Sammy…"

"It's Sam, anyway."

"You have the balls to ruin a perfectly good emotional moment by correcting me? You're getting as bad as me."

Sam gave a crooked smile and feigned apologetic. "All right, I admit, I was scared too. I just…when you started bleeding like that…"

"I know. But I'm proud of you, all right? You did a hell of a job back there, and well, I'm glad you were with me. I wouldn't have had anybody else."

"Dean, I'm..." Sam stumbled for words and none of his collegiate level vocabulary seemed to fit. "I'm touched."

"Yeah, don't get used to it. It's all these over-hyped emotions talking. Give me a few minutes. I'll find some decent bullshit buried in this brain somewhere."

In the distance, a woman cried their names, and they lifted their heads to the noise. Obscured by the blinding sun against her back, the brothers raised a hand to shield their eyes as the woman hurried towards them until she fell to her knees and threw her arms around her sons. "My boys!" she cried, while they pressed their cheeks against her. She turned from one to the other, kissing their foreheads and stroking their hair. When she directly faced Sam at last, she paused and stared at him, looking upon her baby boy for the first time since she laid him to bed the night of her death. "Oh honey," she whispered. Sam promptly embraced her, feeling a love he had never known ignite within.

As Mary held her youngest son and whispered maternal comforts, Dean rose to his feet and faced his father who was standing in front of them. "I came back, Dad," he said, holding his head high and shoving his hands into faded denim pockets. "I told you I would."

John smiled, a gesture that seemed unnatural against his weathered face, and rested his hand tightly on Dean's shoulder. "So you did. I never should have doubted you."

Dean looked over his shoulder to Sam, who was standing next to their mother. "I couldn't have done it without Sam, though. He was with me all the way." To Dean's remark, Sam bowed his head, long bangs tumbling over his face, embarrassed in his father's presence.

Slowly, John moved to his youngest son and lifted Sam's head until they were meeting eyes. Behind him, Mary wrapped her arm around Dean's waist, pulling him tighter as if reassuring herself that her sons were alive and well. Dean allowed her unyielding hold to continue and rested his cheek against the top of her head, merely drinking in the moment. This was his family now, whole and complete in every form, and they would never again be apart.

John looked at Sam and chewed on his lower lip before speaking. "I was stupid to think this family could have gone on without you." His words tripped for an instant before continuing with a renewed confidence. "Dean was right, we needed…_need_…you here."

Sam smiled faintly, fighting back tears, and he whispered over a lump in his throat, "Thanks, Dad."

After the family had returned to the motel room for a change of clothes and a decent meal, Dean and Sam retrieved the Impala later that day where they rode the back roads against the cresting afternoon wind. The sun, high in the luminous blue sky, shimmered in its reflection on the black paint of the car that swooped around the curves of the green countryside roads and away from the blackened lake. There was silence inside, no music yet, merely intimate thoughts and hesitant conversations.

"Dean?" Sam was looking out the window at the passing colors of the world he had believed he would never see again. Every sensation seemed magnified in the austere reality of how close he had truly been to losing it all. Before speaking again, he waited a moment until he was positive Dean was listening. "Out of everything we've done…that was really our best moment."

There was a pause, and the only sounds were the whispers of the wind slipping through the cracked windows and the gentle growl of the engine climbing over the hills. Dean nodded slowly and shifted his weight in the worn driver's seat, daring himself to agree and admit. "Nothing will ever compare to it, you know that."

"I know. But, Dean? Thanks…for everything."

Dean smiled, a crooked, close-lipped smirk, and he glanced into his one of his side mirrors in a nonchalant fashion. His large silver band caught the sunlight on his finger and flashed it across the car to the glove box in front of his brother. "No problem, Sammy. You did all right yourself, so, you know, thanks."

There were other hunts and other demons in the years that followed, other victims to save and other wounds to heal. Yet, the brothers would never speak of this incident to anyone else, sensing an incapacity by outsiders to comprehend. Their mother would never ask, never pry, but trust that her two sons were finally at peace with life. Even their own father, who had seen more than they, would have failed to understand how his sons had smeared the line breaking life and death and defied the odds as never before. But, Sam and Dean would talk of their journey, only to each other, during the long miles across the dry and dark country or over breakfast in another family owned restaurant at the newest town where they arrived. They would speak in short clips and long rambles, whispers and laughter, even occasionally tears when the days grew long and the memories pressed hard.

But that day in the car, before Sam pressed another dilapidating cassette into the tape player and before Dean pressed his leather boot a little harder against the accelerator, they looked over at one another. After their words had passed, and the thoughts continued, they shared a private smile that would bond them for the rest of time in memory of that past day. Their greatest journey was their secret alone.

End


End file.
